Peggy's Blog

San Francisco was my destination in 1992 , now it's the site of one of many May 25 protests around the world about ME/CFS, and the "millions missing," of which I am one. This May is also my 24th anniversary of getting sick, coinciding with my 25th Oberlin College reunion. In May of 1992, I was waiting around for Oberlin Commencement (I had graduated officially in December of '91) and I had suddenly contracted the ME/CFS "flu-like illness" that harkens the onset of the disease, though I had experienced what is known as "prodrome" (early, shadowy, pre-illness symptoms) in the years before, and in fact almost dropped out of Oberlin and stayed around the Bay Area in the Fall of 1998, when my body seemed to be saying to me stay but I didn't listen. But let me backtrack to the "prodrome" which -- if research would help us -- could become useful foreshadowing for patients and doctors: I had left Oberlin for a semester off in the Fal...

Mayor Ray Nagin reports that the "storm of the century," Hurricane Gustav, is bearing down on New Orleans. Are we better prepared this time? Time reports : "Stung by the images that flashed across the world, including the photo of an elderly woman dead in her wheelchair, her body covered with a blanket, officials promised to find a better way." I remember that image too – the wheelchair, of course, is what got me. Not only the wheelchair, but also the appalling lack of recognition of disability issues in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I heard reporters talking about race and class and sidestepping the disability issue. I remember another image of a man with no legs on a rooftop. The newscast cut from that image to one of a reporter saying quizzically, "Why didn't some people leave?" The reporter, of course, drew no connection between those crazy stragglers and, say, the lack of legs. So what's the plan for Gustav? "This time, the cit...

This image symbolizes me moving my blog from MySpace, which I just did (mostly)! My life also feels like this picture most of the time. Not because I'm able-bodied enough to hitch up an oxbow (or, in this case, yoga strap) and pull several tons of steel, and not because I'm actually doing the preposterous maneuvers in this picture, but because of ME/CFIDS and the fact that most of the time I feel like I'm lying beneath the steel.