Every so often, I read or watch something that makes me stop and think, “That’s me!” It’s almost always totally out of the blue and usually from an unexpected place, which makes it all the more strange and enjoyable.
The second half of 2019 wasn’t pleasant. I’d been struggling a lot with fatigue, muscle weakness, hip and joint pain and a number of other, smaller things that just got in the way of everything, from work to socialising to jobs around the house.
I’m blessed to have wonderful medical teams who are equipped with all sorts of tools and vast amounts of knowledge to help delve into the depths of any problem and figure out a solution.
The problem was, they couldn’t. I had blood panels, ECGs, CT scans, MRI scans (well, one MRI scan), X-rays, lung function tests, exploratory bronchoscopies, neurological test, physical tests and just about everything else you can imagine short of a mammogram. And still they came up with nothing.
I found it hard to describe to people what it felt like. Not just physically, trying to trudge through treacle every day, but mentally – fighting to maintain focus, but also to keep a sense of hope that a mind like molasses wasn’t going to be my new normal. It’s terrifying to think you might have lost a huge chunk of your quality of life for good.
Last week I was watching Resurfacing, the new Andy Murray documentary on Amazon from the producers of Searching for Sugar Man1.
In it, his hip injury and on-going pain kept recurring, keeping him out of competition (and often off the court completely) and making him think he had no option but to retire. No matter what they tried, no one seemed to have an answer. That’s when his wife, Kim, said:
The thing that was really hard emotionally for Andy was that every single person brings hope and just some little flicker of “maybe this is it”.
Kim Murray
That’s precisely how I felt, put into exactly the right word. Every test, every appointment, every consultation offered new hope, but none ever delivered on its promise.
It’s so easy to lose hope, so easy to allow negative thoughts about the future to creep in and take over, and the light at the end of the tunnel can seem dim and distant.
Just knowing that someone else has been there before, that someone – however distant from you and unconnected – has felt the same things you feel can turn those thoughts around. It’s hard to plough a field that you feel has never seen human life, let alone had its soil tilled, but once you can see the cab of the tractor in the neighbouring field, you know the land is ripe for sowing crops.
The journey may not be over and knowing someone else has been there won’t hasten it, but it does help create confidence that anything is possible if we can only endure. Keep your eyes and your ears open: chances are that whatever you’re going through, someone else has already been there.