Rebecca describes developing ME/CFS in 2005 and feeling labeled incurable until she worked with Ashok Gupta in 2006. His behavioral technique and meditation CD, combined with discipline and lifestyle changes, led to progressive improvement. She eventually returned to activities like long walks and a 1,000-mile sailing trip.
Hi, my Name's Rebecca. I'm 36 years old and I've been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome for two and a half years. Although my symptoms predated the point of diagnosis, what happened was in May 2005, I was working up in London as a locum rehabilitation worker with children with vision impairment, which basically means I was teaching people with serious problems independent skills and travel skills. During that time, I contracted. I think I must have picked a virus up from one of the kids, unfortunately. So I was off work for about a week initially with, you know, hallucinations, the lot, but I had a couple of weeks in the summer, about six weeks, where I could relax, and I thought, great, you know, I'll go on cycle rides, I'll be able to go for walks, I'll be able to swim in the sea, I'll be able to do lots of sailing, which is my main passion in life. You know, I'll be looking forward to being really energetic. And I didn't want to do any of those things. I just wanted to sit on the beach and read a book and do nothing, which for me is totally out of character. So four days later, I went back to see my GP and I said, look, I think you're a great doctor, but I don't think you're right about me being depressed. And he leaned across his desk and he said, no, I don't think so either. And I thought, great. And he said, I've been doing a bit of thinking and I've been doing a bit of searching on the Internet, and I think you've got something called chronic fatigue syndrome. And I looked at him and I was none the wiser. And I said, well, I don't know what you're talking about. And he said, well, technically speaking, he shouldn't have diagnosed me because I had to have been ill for six months before he could actually diagnose me. And this was in the October 2005. So he said, but because of your experiences of having a sore throat and everything else, he kind of threw the rule book out the window and said, look, I'm prepared to say that this is definitely what you've got, because, you know, you've had the blood test, you've had the camera down your throat, you've had a chest X ray, everything is coming back blank. And it was like a diagnosis by elimination, exclusion diagnosis, which I think is a common experience. So his chat with me ended with the unforgettable sentence of, don't worry, you've got an untreatable incurable disease. So with that little bombshell ringing my ears, I walked home, which is about, you know, two minutes walk away because I live on the same street. I got home, shut the door and thought, well, what do I do now? How do I, who've got no medical training, I know less about my own body than I do about, you know, pop music or literature. How or no, what on earth am I going to do? How am I going to get well? Plus the fact I had this overwhelming tiredness and short term memory loss, like you can't believe. So really as a result of my continued belief that I was always going to get better, but also as a recognition of my need to involve other people in assisting me to achieve that, I went to see Ashok in November 2006 and his was really the first explanation of chronic fatigue syndrome that really fitted and explained all of my symptoms, including my rib pain, my breathlessness, the kind of waves of fatigue that would almost like pop up. They're like bubbles that sort of pop up to the surface for unexplained reasons. That feeling of, oh my God, I can't weed the patio. And it being this massive trauma thing that you're going to do, instead of just thinking, well, you know, I can weed 10 minutes and be okay. And so I started using the technique that Ashok taught me. And whilst I found it acutely embarrassing to begin with, even if I was in a room on my own, I found it quite difficult. Gradually. It's a bit like a new pair of shoes. You kind of got over the initial discomfort period and it became more comfortable and it became something that made sense. And, you know, I'm the world's greatest skeptic. You know, I don't believe in much. So there was me doing this thing. But it was nice as well because it was very private. I mean, he said right from the beginning, don't tell anyone about this. This is yours. This is like, this is your power source. You don't have to share this with anyone else. And to this day, no one else really knows what my technique is, except for myself and Ashok, which I find quite comforting in a world when we're all supposed to wear our hearts on the sleeve. I consider myself at that point possibly functioning at about 55% of what I was of the pre chronic fatigue symptom free so called healthy Becky that I was before. He said to me, in three months time, you will see dramatic improvement. And I thought, yeah, right. But two months later, I had the opportunity to go up to Cumbria with My husband and I found myself in a totally new environment with no central heating, Very, very good, whole food, totally in control of my days. And, you know, I was walking for an hour, an hour and a half through so sodden Cumbrian ground. You know, I went out in the snow, I went out in the hail, I went out and breathed that fresh air and I felt alive, probably for the first time since I'd been through the valley of ill health. And although the technique was difficult and frustrating and I would get angry, you know, like a two year old, I don't want to do my homework, you know, I made myself do it. And a bit of rigor and a bit of self discipline really assisted me in that. And the fact that Ashok was very patient because often he'd phone me up and say, well, you know, have you been doing this regularly? And I'd be saying, well, you know, sort of trying to make it seem that I'm doing it more often than I did. But in the end, a lot of the stuff and I found the other thing that I found really useful that Ashok bought was the meditation CD and 20 minutes of sitting calmly in a chair, learning to breathe, just letting go of, if you like, the pressure to be well, because there's an amazing amount of pressure from friends and family. You know, when you say to people that you're not well, well, you know, when are you going to be better then? Come on, you can get over this, keep positive, blah, blah, blah. And now, what can I say now? Well, I've just come back, I'm a bit brown because I've been sailing for two weeks, I've just sailed a thousand miles, Portugal, on a boat with five blokes, bit testing at the best of times, doing a shift system, which meant I was on shift for three hours and off for six. And although that was demanding, without knowing my body in the way that I do now, without being able to say to myself, these are my symptoms, but I can be in charge of them without using my technique, without having that bit of weaponry, if you like that bit of assistance. I never would have achieved it. And now, you know, I feel that full health is imminent. You know, it's not something that I'm going to keep talking about in the future tense to anyone who's thinking about doing this. I'd say there are weirder things in life than using Ashok's technique. You know, we are all supposed to believe in so many things that not many of us really understand, you know, the mysteries of nuclear fission. Unless you're a physicist, mate. It is fairy stories. This is not a fairy story. This is something which, although it may sound strange to most of us, brought up with a, you know, gp, who gives you a box of pills and says, there's your cure, you know, it's something different. But if that something different works, then do it. You know, we all have capacity within ourselves to challenge our own sets of beliefs. And if you had said to me four years ago that I would have an untreatable, incurable disease, but that I would find it in myself to walk away from that with Ashok's assistance, then give it a go. You'll be surprised. And hopefully you'll be, well, It.
