When everybody kept saying that nothing could change and I just had to accept my very limited life after being struck down by some unknown virus, my mom was on a mission. The first few years of my illness we . . . → Read More: My Mom on a Mission]]> I can’t even begin to tell you how grateful I am for my mom.

When everybody kept saying that nothing could change and I just had to accept my very limited life after being struck down by some unknown virus, my mom was on a mission. The first few years of my illness we did not quite know what we were up against, and were probably all (mercifully) in different degrees of denial. – It just needed a bit more time to clear the “bug”, maybe I was feeling low because I was a new mom, it’s normal to feel low when you just had a baby and I had had a very hard pregnancy, I would/should “snap out of it” soon, it’s the vegetarian diet;- B12 deficiency for sure, she is probably homesick for Norway, and on and on.

13 years on (and no babies to keep me up at night), I was more limited than ever. We now knew that what I suffered from was called fibromyalgia and ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). I had been told for many years that very few people recovered from these conditions, and if they did so they usually recovered in the early stages of the illness. Needless to say, that did not leave much hope for me. After many years of relentless search for a cure, trying every treatment under the sun (you name it – I tried it), I was facing the very real possibility that this was something I just could not beat. After spending thousands of dollars on a last ditch effort with a medical clinic who specialized in ME/CFS, I had nothing to show for it except a failing thyroid, and an empty bank account. I felt I finally had to accept my fate, and follow the general counsel of learning to live within my “energy envelope”. That was not much cause of celebration. – Most 80 year olds I knew had more energy than I had, and I was half their age!

Back to my mom. She sure has not been lacking in energy. And the last few years of my illness she committed part of that energy into searching for the hope that I no longer was able to support. Anytime she heard of a product, food, or theory that offered some promise in the treatment of ME/CFS she swung into action. Like the time she invested her hard earned resources (working part time as a nurses aid, and starving artist) in a 250 dollar t-shirt (!) that supposedly had some healing and pain relieving metal weaved into the fabric, or the time she bought detox drops for a small fortune because she felt the reason I was sick was that I had been exposed to mercury when she worked as a dental assistant in the early months of being pregnant with me, or the Herbalife powder that someone convinced her could give me much needed strength, or the many times she and my dad left their busy lives in Norway to give me a chance to rest and recover, when they took care of the children and the house and the laundry and the cooking and the yard work and the poor overworked husband, not to mention the time they cancelled everything to nurse me back to health after I suffered the second pneumonia in just over three months one year. She was always on the lookout for magazines and news reports about my condition, and when I was not able to hope for myself, she kept on hoping and exploring and net-working and researching.

After my very disappointing (not to mention expensive) experience with the Fibromyalgia and Fatigue Center concept, I was in no mood for another let down. The last thing I wanted to hear about was another “cure”. But my mom was on a mission, and she was keeping at me with reports of soundingly miraculous recoveries through a new treatment called “The Lightning Process”. Even the name was enough to turn me off. Fortunately she kept at it. When she sensed that I was not really listening she started telling my husband about it. After a while she managed to have me promise to look into it. She had talked to one of my nursing colleagues who had travelled to England to undergo this new treatment, and after suffering for almost 20 years, most of the time being on disability, housebound, and the last few years bedbound, she had made a full recovery.

The rest, as they say, is history. I attended a Lightning Process training in Oslo July 4,5 and 6 of 2008. The 4th of July will forever be my “Independence From ME/CFS Day”.

It is more that 1 1/2 years later, and I have been able to do things that I had never thought possible. The relentless fatigue is gone. So is the brainfog and the muscle pain, the frequent headaches and strange infections. The push-and-crash cycle that had become an all too familiar pattern in my life. The irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and food sensitivities. The sensitivity to chemicals, and even everyday stimuli like sound! The hopelessness and terror of not being able to trust my body for the most basic functioning.

This post is already too long. But what I want to share with you is so important. – I recovered from ME/CFS. – So has thousands of other people of all ages and varying degrees of symptoms and severity. For some reason these stories have not yet been told in the US. That clearly has to change! – Not everybody has a mom like mine, so I am on a mission to get the word out.

Thank’s mom.