Beth Dobbin knows just talking about it is going to make things worse.
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things → know → it
Just five years after running the 200 meters at the Tokyo Olympics for Great Britain, the 32-year-old is confined to bed for 22 hours a day as she battles myalgic encephalomyelitis, a fatigue-inducing illness.
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she → run → encephalomyelitis
“I’ve done little things like attend a blood test at the doctors and been in bed for months after.
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I → do → months
So doing this interview, chatting away for 30 minutes, that could have an impact on me in 2027,” she told BBC Sport.
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she → do → Sport
“But I felt like it was really important to do that to get the message out.”
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it → feel → message
Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), otherwise knows a chronic fatigue syndrome, is an incurable, long-lasting illness that makes any form of physical and mental exertion difficult, per the CDC.
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form → know → CDC
For Dobbin, it makes her feel like her body “is shutting down; it feels like you are a few days from death”.
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you → make → death
Something as simple as a conversation can cause her to “crash” for anywhere from 24 hours to months on end.
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her → cause → end
The Scotland native said she only gets out of bed to eat or use the bathroom.
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she → say → bathroom
Other common symptoms include a frequent sore throat, digestive issues, allergies, sensitivities, muscle and joint pain, nausea and headaches.
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symptoms → include → throat
“It’s life-decimating like I can’t even put into words,” she said to BBC Sport.
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she → ’ → Sport
“I feel like I’ve lost everything.
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I → feel → everything
I have still got my family, but I’ve lost my independence, my health, the ability to work, the ability to exercise.”
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I → get → independence
Dobbin, a 200-meter specialist, battled Covid and glandular infections back-to-back in 2021-22, owing lingering exhaustion to a condensed season.
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Dobbin → battle → season
She soon experienced restlessness and dizzy spells, and lost all feeling in her legs in the starting blocks of a race, resulting in a false start.
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She → experience → start
“I think I saw four or five different specialists because the symptoms that I was having, they were across multiple [body] systems,” she said.
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she → think → systems
“All the specialists said ‘this is ME’ and we don’t want it to be that because there’s nothing out there for it.”
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it → say → it
She is emboldened with hope after the Covid pandemic and the emergence of long Covid, which shares symptoms with ME and has brought awareness the illness she shares with a known 400,000 people in the United Kingdom and another 3.3 million in the US, though those numbers are believed to be low estimates.
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numbers → embolden → US
“I said I wanted to speak about it.
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I → say → it
It’s not necessarily that I want to discuss it [but] it’s raising that awareness.
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it → ’ → awareness
And unfortunately, athletes are believed a lot more than the average person,” she said.
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she → believe → person
“A lot of people that have this illness that I’ve spoken to have said to me ‘I don’t get believed, people think I’m lazy.’
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I → have → me
I’ve never experienced one person that doesn’t believe me and that’s because, why would an athlete just suddenly stop after 20 years?
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athlete → experience → years
“I’ve got a slight platform.
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I → get → platform
If this happened to most people they wouldn’t be able to speak about it, so I do feel like I’ve got a bit of a duty to do that.”
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I → happen → that
The Aporia
