Memories, bad dreams and changing names

This is my 2nd blog and my 1st blog entry on this new one 'Space of a ME guinea pig'. No doubt you'll be wondering why I've bothered to go through all the hassle of setting up a completely new blog just to change its name. There are two reasons;

1. I hoped that a blog with more commonly used words would get more hits
2. I wanted to change the CFS/PVFS/ME to just ME

After many years I've decided I like, on the whole, ME as the official name the best. The problem for a long time wasn't sure what the term Myalgic Encephalomyelitis means. Basically its a two words with five parts. My = muscle, Algic = pain, Encephalo = brain, Mye = spinal cord, Itis = inflammation. ME is the traditional name for the disease, being first used in 1956, whilst CFS wasn't used till sometime in the 70s/80s.

ME  is a debilitating neurological disease initiated by a virus; an enterovirus. The 'ME' part of my condition was almost undoubtably caused by an enterovirus and was certainly pretty debilitating! I did suffer from neurological muscle pain as well. For a while I actually preferred the term PVFS because the condition is so often caused by a virus but now I've learnt that ME is also classed as a condition caused by a virus I've warmed to it.

I found out most of this from http://www.hfme.org/

I had no less than two bad dreams last night. The first one I can't remember; the second was a weird dream made up of memories of when I was little. A male district nurse was the main figure in it. He was very eccentric and dressed up as a teddy bear. The district nurses are two of the few people from those times that I remember with any degree of warmth though they were female.

Dr Wights tests have stirred up memories of those times for me, mostly not very happy ones. They have changed the way I remember them though; before my grief was always mixed up with guilt when I remember how ill I was. In spite of the fact my family and friends have always believed I was genuinely, physically ill there was always a small nagging part of me that held onto the abuse I'd been through and couldn't shake off the nagging doubt that I had had some control over my illness in some way. Since the tests and the recent research findings I've started to believe I was genuinely ill though and to regard it as just one of those bad experiences people go through in life. Like getting divorced or miscarrying or having cancer. Strangely thinking this has lessened my grief too