Get Well Soon

by Nick Duerden

  ‘Things could be worse, you know?’

  She is right, of course. They could. The noisy neighbour could still be living next door, but he isn’t, he has sold up, and a much quieter couple have moved in. I could be bedbound, I could have lost my job, or else be as suicidal as the Q&A form I need to fill in each week persists in asking. But things could also be better. I could be well, walking again, running, swimming, cycling for longer than 10 minutes at a time. I could be shopping with my children, taking them to the park, the museum, anywhere. My aim here is to claw back some kind of normality. Is this too much to ask for?

  If I am reading Claire correctly, then maybe it is, yes.

  Right, so. A door has been slammed shut in my face. I have reached a kind of impasse, arrived at a dead end. Because I am not more seriously unwell, no concrete procedure available, that’s it, I’m on my own. As far as the NHS is concerned, my life is already pretty good. Things could be worse.

  But, no. I refuse because, frankly, I am not prepared to put up with the way things are now for ever. I have not acclimatised to my condition, not at all, and nor do I want to. I want to get better, to actively, proactively, become well again. I will not accept that this is too much to ask. From my nervy readings on the subject, I know that it is possible, entirely feasible in fact, and that if I do things the right way, it is realistically likely that I will not just improve but fully recover. Others have, so why not me? It is time to reclaim the world, or at least my small part in it.

  The alternative – do nothing, put up and shut up – is not a viable option. I am not prepared for another three or four more decades of this. I have spent too long treading water. Enough. I have had enough. I sense that Elena has too, but she is too nice, too saintly patient (for now), to say.

  I have had more than a passing thought of late that my condition might have done temporary wonders for our relationship. Though we have always, I think, been strong, solid and still sufficiently happy with one another, we were nevertheless reaching the stage where, as newspapers like to tell us with irritating frequency, stagnation can and almost invariably does occur. That stagnation is why people have children, pets, and go into debt in order to have two weeks holiday a year. A change of dynamics, those newspaper articles tell us, and a change of scenery too, can perform wonders.

  We had done all that. The pets, or rather pet, singular, was long gone, the children an ongoing project, and holidays were currently on hold. We were now mired in the daily drudgery of family life, and while this was enlivened by the routine thunderbolts of pure joy that only your children can conjure up, it was still a fact of life that our downtime now was comprised mostly of watching boxsets together, in companionable silence. Even a good boxset can only summon up so much excitement.

  My becoming unexpectedly and, better yet, enigmatically ill, then, gave us something new to focus on, a novel pastime for the simple reason that it did pass time. Elena was brilliant: my carer, my nurse and educator. She continued to research the condition, and possible cures, at night, and often during days at work. Anything she suggested, I tried, and when I remained doggedly unwell, she was on hand to talk to, to sound off at, and to listen to me moan and grumble, pulling me as roughly as necessary from a trough of self-pity.

  Evenings were now spent around the kitchen table essentially having the same conversation over and over again until we were both too tired to talk, while in the living room Mad Men remained unwatched. I marvelled at her patience, and then I worried over it, convinced it wasn’t, and shouldn’t be, finite. If my social life had unavoidably plummeted to nothing, it didn’t seem fair that hers should too. I encouraged her to go out with friends, and she didn’t need to be encouraged twice. When I bought her a few introductory lessons for salsa classes, she very quickly signed up for several more. She dressed up for it, with make-up. She looked pretty. It hurt to watch her go.

  Though I have grown accustomed to solitude these past two years, I increasingly crave the company of other people. Anyone, I find, will do. One day, Jehovah’s Witnesses stop by, two of them, male and female, both in late middle age, he the talky halitosis one, she with the vow of silence. I allow him to engage me for a full 20 minutes with warnings about the end of the world, which by all accounts is imminent, but not too imminent. ‘It is foretold,’ he says, pointing to a line in the leaflet that references Armageddon. He says he will leave the leaflet with me to read later at my leisure. We continue to talk at length now, shooting the biblical breeze, until he says something I thought no Jehovah’s Witness would ever say: ‘I’ll let you go now.’ And then he turns to go, still smiling his benevolent smile but striding down my garden path and onto the street, towards my neighbours. I very nearly follow him, wanting to cry out, ‘No, wait! Come back! I’ve tea, biscuits!’

  This is bad. Something has to be done. No, I  have to do something. Me.

  And so I do. I decide to write about it. In what form, I am not yet sure, but I will get it down on-screen, because if anything can help me to understand all this, and my progress through it, writing will. I am not sure yet if I will ever make it public, because my fatigue to date has been a strictly private matter, my business, my failing; I do not want to be judged by anyone else, and I do not want people to think that it has impacted on areas of my life that it hasn’t. By which I mean work. I can still work. But writing about it could allow me to immerse myself in the subject from a constructive point of view. I could research it the way I would a news story, ideally well beyond its Wikipedia page. This might put me in an advantageous position because the more research I do, the more experts I might gain access to, experts I would otherwise never even know existed. And these people will be able to offer me a deeper understanding than I currently have into its cause and effect, the best ways to understand it better, to be less afraid of it and, perhaps, even ultimately to overcome it and leave it all behind.

  Being a patient is to exist in a passive state; you become both noun and adjective. You sit there being given instruction by someone with greater knowledge, but the diagnosis is often brief and confusing. It all takes a while to settle, and the information can tip into overload, with only its headlines grasped. Sometimes you can forget much of what was said to you the moment you get back outside. Not the gist of it; the gist of it lingers like a bad smell. But the meat of it. Later, questions arise, not all of them hysterical ones, but there isn’t always someone immediately available to answer those questions. And so they multiply, while others fall away. You find yourself wanting to go back in time to the initial diagnosis, on the promise that this time around you will pay greater attention. You might even take notes.

  This is essentially what happened to me after I left Dr Dolittle. His vague diagnosis hit me like a thunderclap, but all I could remember afterwards was the thunderclap itself. I couldn’t remember really what else he said, and for reference I had to consult with Elena because I had called her straight after my appointment, and she had retained what my mind had since so carelessly discarded.

  Had I interviewed Dr Dolittle, on the other hand, emotion might not have intruded so much. I might have paid more attention and had the objective confidence to ask him more questions, some of which might have been penetrating ones that might have prompted illuminating answers. Most crucially, I would have recorded our conversation, which meant I would have been able to listen to it over and over again, as much as necessary.

  The idea appealed, and motivated me. Of course it did; I was desperate, clutching at straws. But if nothing else, it would give me something to do. And it might just work.

  Is it possible to write yourself better?

  There are, I learn, approximately 465 alternative treatments out there aimed at people for whom mainstream medical advice has left them wanting. Presumably some of these treatments, many of them even, work? I will request interviews with leaders in their field, people with larger brains, better skills, greater knowledge. They can shed light on their work, my condition, and help
me find a way out.

  So if that door really has been slammed shut on me, maybe I can shoulder open another one and write up my experiences for my own benefit, yes, but also for others in similar situations in the hope that it might help them, too. I cannot be the only one behind a closed door.

  This sounds like a plan.

  Who first?

  The offer of an interview with a motivational guru comes via email; his name I can no longer remember, and I would not repeat it here even if I did. Under normal circumstances, this email would have joined the dozens of other offers I receive on any given day in my Deleted Items, but I am immediately intrigued. His publicity people claim he might be the new Paul McKenna, the man who can make people sleep, thin, clever, happy. I look him up. Like McKenna, he is frequently employed in the world of big business and high finance, helping staff to focus themselves into being the best they can be, not just for their employers but also, presumably, for themselves. But he is good with phobias, too, and anxiety. One newspaper archly suggests he resembles Frank Spencer. I check out his website. He looks dynamic, his hair still redolent of the stylist’s scissors, his teeth expensively dentisted. He boasts of his work with governments, how he always produces results and leaves people with a new zest for life. His promises are unabashed and boastful, his whole approach aggressively American. He can, he says, change your life.

  Perfect, I think. I will interview him for a newspaper, then try to summon up the courage to broach my own issue on the side, and see where it leads. It is a prospect that unnerves me, though; I am not very good at this kind of thing. He is the subject, not me, and a journalist should never talk more than they listen, never take crass advantage.

  I quickly hit what, in hindsight, is an obvious stumbling block: I cannot get my newspaper interested. No one really needs to read about a Paul McKenna-lite. It’s a crowded area he inhabits, there are lots of him about, and there can seem something bullishly insincere about all of them. To many, they can appear opportunistic and ultimately vacuous, and no self-respecting editor would want to give very many of them the oxygen of publicity.

  But I am desperate, and so I find myself emailing the man direct, almost against my will. I explain my predicament, my quest for knowledge, my aim to write about it somewhere, and I proffer myself as a viable case study. He has done bankers, MPs, all those arachnophobes, but can he heal the sick, someone with complicated sub-personality issues; me?

  It takes him two weeks to respond. Come to my upcoming seminar, he writes, I’m sure we can work out a discount. I am heartened by his reply, and go online to read about it. The seminar focuses on honing in on one’s managerial skills in pursuit of transforming a humdrum worker into a serious achiever, somebody worthy of promotion, a salary hike. We will leave the seminar newly invigorated and pumped up. We will have clear goals, and the tools with which to achieve them. The course is open to just 50 of us on a first-come first-served basis, so hurry. The charge is £500.

  I email back to thank him, but explain that I am not the managerial type. Might he have any other seminars, perhaps more personal ones? Two weeks later, he emails back to say that no, he doesn’t.

  My plan has stumbled at its first hurdle. I write back thanking him all the same, and am surprised, a further week on, when he writes again. There is an alternative, he says. He sometimes works one to one, tailoring the sessions to the individual’s needs. My excitement redoubles in an instant, and I look more kindly now at his picture on his website. I decide that he doesn’t look like Frank Spencer at all, not really. The teeth, perhaps, a little. The tilt of his head. The beret.

  I respond, and ask him to explain more, and he writes that, because of his busy schedule, we could work together over the course of a single day. We would meet in the morning and go on for as many hours as required. But I will leave cured. Cured. This is one of those words that the more you look at it, the stranger it seems. But it resonates on the screen of my BlackBerry, and I stare at it and stare at it, barely believing my luck. The lack of exclamation mark somehow makes his claim all the more powerful, because here is a man so confident in his abilities that he doesn’t have to shout to get his message across.

  ‘Interested?’ is how he finishes his email.

  Interested? Yes! Of course! I reply quickly, asking him to address the only thing he has failed to mention: his fee.

  It takes a full day for his response to come. I count the seconds.

  ‘£6000. Let me know.’

  I email neurologists, brain specialists, and at least four pop and rock stars who have battled with fatigue but are, or appear to be, better now. The former and the latter never respond; the two brain specialists reply by saying they are too busy and cannot spare me the time. And then I encounter a friend of a friend who says he might be able to help. He suffered fatigue for several years. ‘I tried everything,’ he says. Nothing worked, but then he discovered that eating a whole clove of garlic each morning helped him get fully better. Perhaps I should try this myself, he suggests.

  This comes close to defeating me: cure by garlic. It is a measure, I think, of a condition as vague and infuriatingly bespoke as this that vampire bait becomes a viable remedy. Little wonder it is so difficult for practitioners to agree on a single treatment, and little wonder too that so many find it hard to take quite as seriously as perhaps the condition demands.

  At Elena’s encouragement, I seek out a physiotherapist purely because, after two years of physical inactivity, I am bound to be stiff and inflexible. I find one who cites CFS in her past. She is based in a nearby gym.

  At 17 years old, I read on her website, the physiotherapist sustained an injury that somehow led to irritable bowel syndrome and, by the age of 20, ‘full-blown chronic fatigue’. Doctors referred her on endlessly, in the hope that somebody might be able to help. She eventually met with a cranial osteopath whose sessions she found powerfully altering. ‘Many people noticed that I grew taller’, she writes on her website. ‘I found myself much less fatigued, lighter, and my digestion, skin and sleep, all improved.’

  I book an appointment. In the flesh, she is tiny but wildly effusive, as if lit from within. I half expect to see a flex leading from her to a plug in the wall socket. She is all eyes and mouth and teeth, and she employs them simultaneously as she displays sympathy, empathy, understanding and encouragement as I tell her why I am here. She takes notes in the kind of handwriting only she will be able to discern – a long spidery scrawl – and interjects a lot, as if every time a thought dawns, she needs to air it immediately. She speaks without taking breaths, it seems. Great ribbons of words flow out of her; often I lose the thread. She says she has noticed that when I speak, my breath catches in my chest. This alters my voice, and denotes nerves, some underlying anxiety. Not everybody would pick up on this, she says, but she does. ‘I’m specially trained.’

  On her website, on which she describes herself, disconcertingly, as a celebrity therapist for a prime-time BBC1 show, she speaks of her special techniques for sinus problems, dental issues, digestive and birth traumas. She also performs something called fascial unwinding, a movement-based therapy used to unravel the body’s connective tissue network which helps overcome injury and restrictions by increasing range of motion and function.

  She asks me whether I believe I can get well, and I tell her yes, I hope so. But, often and more frequently, I do sometimes wonder whether I ever will.

  ‘It’s important you do believe,’ she says. ‘It’s crucial.’

  She puts down her pen and paper and says that she can help me, and that over the next few weeks – yes, she says quickly, almost impatiently, I must come back for more sessions – she will be asking me lots of personal, sometimes invasive, questions, in order to find out more about me, and how I tick. Do I have a problem with that? The question is rhetorical, because she keeps talking. And, indeed, over the next few weeks, she will talk almost incessantly at me, proffering a great barrage of information both relevant and sometimes
not. She tells me about her past, her many injuries and illnesses, the reaction of friends and family, her difficult boyfriends, some of whom were ‘mad’, one of whom had ‘mad’ parents. She tells me how one particular relationship problem was inadvertently initiated in B&Q when she overrode her partner’s hunter/gatherer instincts by proving herself the dominant one when she lifted a heavy object in front of a member of staff. She boasts of her energy levels, which are constantly high, constantly firing, and of the zest she brings to the health club, which is what her colleagues always say, even those who don’t know her very well. ‘They say there is more energy about when I’m here than when I’m not!’

  She tells me to lie down, and when she starts finally to massage me, it is unlike any massage experience I have had. She places a flat palm on my body, my chest, my arms, my thighs. In the expertise of her touch, she explains, its intrinsic know-how, energy will be brought up to circulate, released and relinquished. It will move where previously it had been blocked. As she does this, she asks me whether I feel any difference, any warmth or cold, and all the while she keeps talking, about her parents, her travels, about biology and science. Whenever a topic of conversation strays onto something negative – the recollection of an awkward moment, or else a painful one – she removes her hand to ensure that no negative energy is passed from her to me.

  I leave my first session a little bewildered and bemused, but also sort of hooked. I have never met anyone quite like her. She is vivacious and serious, funny and smart. Most of what she tells me I almost immediately forget, but I conclude that it’s my fault, my antenna faulty. Because her signal is clearly strong enough.

  When I return the following week, she does more laying on of hands. The promised personal questions she mentioned the week previously never really come, and instead she tells me more about herself, events that have challenged her in some way, and she says that challenges are good, because what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and that’s the message here, the one to parcel up and take away, and unwrap in times of vulnerability. She strongly recommends I buy a particular medical book, one she had bought and pored over when studying to become a doctor (studies she didn’t complete), and she shows it to me now, a huge, heavy, hardback thing, filled with hundreds of pages of colour diagrams of bones and veins and arteries, and expansive explanations on each, along with copious footnotes. It is not the kind of pop science book that makes it onto the front tables at Waterstones, not the kind of book I could ever read for pleasure.