You Can Deck Me With A Whiff Of The Wind

I hate this disease.

Just when I begin to grasp some new chance to participate in life again, it rises up before me, like some mythical monster, mighty and high, wide and powerful. It leans its head downwards towards my frail body and blows a tiny breath, a poof, ever so small against my being. And once more I am slammed downward into my place on the couch.

"You dared to try something new. You grabbed a chance to have a small part in a play. You were sure you had it all worked out. Well, I will show you, once again, who is in charge!!"

I am here once again, discouraged, defeated, disheartened. Aches in every muscle and joint. Headache that nothing will ease. All concentration and memory gone. Sore throat and throbbing sinuses setting in. Battered back once again by a brutal master.

While the Centers For Disease Control continue their twenty-five year squabbling to discredit the validity of this disease as a real physical illness and and play out their political maneuvering to discredit any research that points to a cause or a future treatment, I enter my twentieth year of living with this modern plague. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Fibromyalgia. Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome. Myalgic Encephalomyalitis (yes, the rest of the world gives this a medical name). Dastardly Destructive Demonic Disease.

I will continue my valiant cause of outsmarting this illness. In the dark of night, where only shadows can guide me, I will find my own personal palace, a hidden cave where the wind cannot reach me. I will continue to whisper or shout my defiance: "You may knock me down -- but you may not have my life!"