Showing posts with label CFS Biomarkers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CFS Biomarkers. Show all posts

Friday 18 August 2017

ME is like a Pair of POLK-DOT-PANTS!!!! Passive Aggressive Non-Trusted Science PANTS




 What do I mean by ME is like a pair of Polka-Dot-PANTS I hear you cry? 
And why: Passive Aggressive Non-Trusted Science?

Well as an illness Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) has been hung out to dry and ridiculed due to its many spots and the fact it never does what you would expect an illness to do. The biggest trial on ME in the UK was the PACE trial and it was the biggest load of PANTS, science has ever produced!

So by flying your Pola-Dot-PANT you are giving recognition to many hidden truths about this unseen illness.
We don’t normally wash our dirty PANTS in the open, but we have been forced to do just that, and now we stand proud against the ridicule we have endured for decades.

How as a society, have we been taught to hate those that either don’t die or don’t get fully functional?

It seems we have decided, you can live with adversity but you must be a hero of some kind, you must never be average or different if you are disabled in the UK. If we can’t see your disability you don’t have one! These threads of our society have been carefully woven into our unconscious mind as a “stiff upper lip”. But that “stiff upper lip” has been woven to discriminate and like all discrimination, it is butt ugly.

In 2011 a group of master weavers showed their Emperors of Parliament the cloth they had woven, it was called the PACE trial. It put forward a treatment called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) - a mind over body approach, that stiff upper lip at all cost. With Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) which was used to get the patient back to work. They promoted that these patients were just deconditioned and not physically ill. This idea has been scientifically disproven. The very physically ill ME suffers, get no treatment, no support and not empathy. The trial is now considered the worst trial by the world research community.
Yet at every twist and turn, even to those that have been bedbound for decades through this treatment, they quote the PACE trial figures at them, as gold standard research.
This trial was important to the government, DWP, and the insurance industries, all of which the researchers were and still are involved with. It enabled them to link ME to a mental illness. DWP and insurance industries don’t have to pay out if they could force ME patients into the Mental Health box? Whatever the world Health Organisation lists ME as, and which they should abide by, they do their own thing? This has taken a large amount of funding from those that need mental health support.
They played on our lack of understanding over the mind, and told everyone how devilish it could be to your body with no real evidence, just a preconceived idea. Mass hysteria was thrown in as the cause of ME. You only have to look at the Camelford water incident to see how it pans out. Or the contaminated blood scandal; to see the tricks our Government and National Health Service are willing to play with our health. Our journalists, were only too happy to oblige with the ridicule as that sells papers? The comic element brought in by YUPPIE FLU and the changed name from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, was an easy play on symptoms that could be turned on the patients behaviour. This abuse has carried on through the decades, after all who listens to the mentally ill?
As a country we love anything that we are in charge of, feel empowered by, have an element of self-help and more importantly – can be pinned on the individual’s responsibility, so that society can wash their hands of them? With this in mind, it was easy to fool the medical profession as a whole, if not the entirety. These patients, they assured all, just need to move to get better, even though it was contrary to the evidence. None listened to the patients, through conferences and meetings doctors and healthcare professionals were told these poor souls are just non-compliant to treatment. Being bedbound was just deconditioning; they did not need tests, as you can just tell their “type”?
The confusion over pain even for cancer patients is becoming so widespread; people are now needlessly dying with no treatment. The adoption of biosocial model; with Medically Unexplained Symptoms, Bodily Dysfunction Disorder, are masking all known diseases like cancer, diabetes, Lymes, Lupus, Thyroid and ME to name just a few.
I had two uncles that had rarely visited the Doctors who have suffered by this and have died after being refused treatment or tests. Both told that they were imagining the severity of the pain. Both found the cause too late, both could have been saved. We hear this all the time with cancer; those numbers are collated, but there are other illnesses and diseases that suffer this fate too and need our support?
Yet a well know group physiatrists and psychologists insist that doctor’s time is wasted by patients that imagine the pain is more profound than it is? These professionals do not learn the fate of those they have dismissed. This is where the trouble begins. We need those professionals to be accountable for their theories, and aware of the damage they have done?
They also seem unaware of the new line of research tracking down our bodies many mechanisms, and how they control our many ecosystems. They seem convinced that they can see another person’s pain, just by looking at them? That they can tell what is going on deep inside a patient’s body without testing, investigating, or spending time to listen to the symptoms and what they tell us?
It is society’s responsibility to make the difference? But our apathy based on the enormous respect we give the medical profession; that they would “do no harm” and are overseen by stringent controls for safety. So we step back, until it happens to us? How many people, who looked happy, and healthy, died the next day? How many young sports people die sudden deaths? Illness does not hang a sign on your face to tell you what is going on deep within your body. Nor do our emotions save us from illness or cause our deaths. Happy people do die. Feeling young, being fit and looking healthy, death has no regard, it will carry you off regardless!
No up-to-date figures are kept of how many adults or children have ME/CFS, no figures of misdiagnosis, or treatments that have helped like Vitamin B12. No SPEC scans that can show the damage. No figures are kept even in trials of the patients that became bed or housebound, after PACE trial like treatments, including those young children. Nothing is done about the false allegations of FII. No figures on how many children taken from loving homes and what happens to them. No autopsy’s to follow the disease and learn. These are stark failings, don’t you think?
For those doctors; who were not fooled by the control the body with your thoughts approach, were sent off to the GMC, who happily chopped of their heads ­­- figuratively speaking. The GMC allowed this to continue, why? Why are parents accused of FII with no indication that is the case? They are given little to no support after a gruelling and stressful court hearing, and are coping with a chronic illness on their own.
These passive aggressive attitudes ripple through our society, so that it has become the normal thinking. They systematically take everyone down; patient, doctor, researchers, journalists and advocates of ME. They ridicule in public so that ME is not taken seriously. They don’t care who gets in their way, even good sound and solid science is brushed aside. Their ability to weave like a snake in our society has been made easy? You only have to look at the Judicial Review details, the many court cases, to see how far they as a collective are prepared to go, and still prepared to go. No matter what the courts say - NHS, GMC and our Government encourage this passive aggressive treatment. The House of Lords debates with countess Mar, heroically stating truths, bare whiteness to this too; spirituality sighted as the best medicine and the only support ME suffers deserve in 2017?
It did not matter if those they defaced, dehumanised were suffering. The more this collective got away with this passive aggressive behaviour, the more the weavers promoted those that could have, or should have, spoken out. Again you only have to look what happened when Philip Hammond wrote a piece in the Private EYE on this subject.
This collective employ their chosen few, rightly believing catch the doctors early and just keep repeating mind over body and it will sink into the fabric of society. How many times do you go to the doctors to be asked are you anxious? Well yes doctor, I do feel anxious. I need my two jobs, I feel so unwell and I do not know what the flying fig is going on with my body. We have now so watered down the true meaning of anxiety, and muddled it up with good reasoning and protective concern.
They ridiculed patients in public or behind closed doors. They locked patients up and exercised them to death, and then they hide or gloss over the facts. It does not seem to bother them; that some of those were young children. Karina Hansen’s medical records are beyond words. Naomi Whittingtom and her family have put the truth out there for all to see. How the forceful physio can harm, I could write endlessly about the blindside of society. How many children are still hidden with no medical care or locked away? Lynn Gilderdale story hurts beyond endurance. Ean Proctor’s court case is fraught with inconsistencies by medical professionals that whitewashed over and never taken to task over the cover-up. Sophie Mirza treatment is sickening beyond belief. Clair Wade along with all the others children through ME history, will show you how detrimental NICE treatment is. But none of these heroes’ collective stories are news worthy apparently “it’s not like cancer”?
A lead paediatric researcher into ME tells us there are two arms of ME, One that can get better, and the other not? That is all the information she has? No reasoning to that statement? No data tests from previous trials show the damage that might be done? The ethics committee, just on this paediatrics say so, agreed we need to put young children through a FITNET program to exercise them unsupervised? To see which group are harmed? Not why this might be? I kid you not! The sad thing is there have been many such trials, and no good results? 1000s of children put through trials that tell us nothing?
Our not so NICE, are willing to wait for this trial on 700 children, to review their guidelines for all sufferers? Fluff a duck in cold bad weather. Even after the fiasco of PACE trial? We have tried very hard to stop these types of trials, but we are ridiculed as simpletons.
Can we trust them to be honest and true with their figures? Anyone who has read the history of the PACEgate will know the answer to that. We are still waiting for the results of another trial on children called SMILE, only it doesn’t make our kids smile. Do they have to report the decline in health of these children?  Well their get out of jail card is that ME is a fluctuating illness that can from time to time make you hospitalised. The science proves otherwise. If you over exert past your bodies limit, your body deteriorates. However keep your body within its limit and you can live without deterioration, and even recover slowly. Turning this truth on its head any decline can be explained away even if the child becomes tube fed, catheterised, bedridden, it is just part of the illness? Is this ethical?
Research proves beyond doubt that physical and mental activity harms the body of an ME patient. So you would expect NICE, NHS and the ethic committee; that passed the FITNET-NHS trial, will be keeping a close eye on the data? Engage with the parents and children, make sure they are safe? Make sure the Helsinki agreement is upheld and ultimately be held responsible for their actions, along with the paediatric researcher’s team? You would be wrong!
Parents are silenced; accused of FII, the courts won’t let you tell your truth. Your children are dropped from trials as recovered. Or as with SMILE trial, parents were accused in a passive aggressive manor that they did not want their children going through the treatment. When in fact the children were too poorly to continue. They are then left unsupported medically and silenced. NICE do not listen to the patients voice. Just PANTS science?
The group of weavers tell you; you must be progressive and intelligent to understand the workings of the mind. You must believe, but most of all you must not test the cloth they have so expertly woven, and they themselves and their friends have tested. The results of the trial you would not understand, because it is far too complicated. They explain they were adrift for a while but they always knew where they would dock, you vexatious lot. The most important thing is not to look at the data; it must be hidden at all cost! TAX payers have paid dearly for the cover-up.

ME treatment can be equated to having a broken infected leg with diabetes and told to walk, close your mind to the pain, be happy and start to live. Yes it is that bad.

You must not ask for an x-ray to show the damage done, because you will believe it? This would just show us your “illness beliefs”; we can lock you in silence for that. Deny the damage or we will not be nice to you, and you will not like us when we are angry! Would you trust this sort of treatment?

As far as infection, they tell us - what a ridiculous idea? Inflammation we can explain that, we have made it as clear as mud! Not that we understand it anyhow? Who would do that in their right mind? What doctor would do such a thing? It’s not as though that has ever happened in the past? MS, crohn's disease, Epileptic fits, Stomach ulcers, coeliac, Alzheimer’s, Autism the list is endless and still we think with just will power, we can control these conditions? They are purely behaviour? Mind control?

Energy production, and metabolomics, mitochondrial difficulties, DNA what silly nonsense they say?


The weft and warp of the cloth is Mass Hysteria and mind control.

Mass Hysteria may be all the fault of the woman. They suffer this in greater prevalence the same as MS. Women are discriminated within the medical profession, we know that. More women suffering maybe down to the fact autoimmunity is different between the sexes. It is to do with X chromosome amongst other things. Anyhow if their theory “Mass Hysteria” was true more ME sufferers would be seen in highly stressed areas of the world? We don’t see that. We do see outbreaks similar to infection or around infectious diseases throughout the world. Take the Ebola outbreak for instance Dr. Abudul El-Sayed is treating one doctor, who is still suffering after recovery from initial infection, and his bloods have come back clear.

The mind is where the weavers got a grip on the illness. They manufactured that the mind controls the brain, which controls the body? How or why they reach this conclusion is uncertain, but apparently it is beyond any doubt?

Science would disagree and say there is a large amount of doubt. Our thoughts are just that, thoughts; some innate, some subconscious and some conscious decisions. You cannot put them all together and have one control box. Experience and behaviour are only part of our complexity of control. We also are only beginning to understand the willed action and how this can be disturbed by damage to the basil ganglia, at the prefrontal cortex which we know facilitates willed action. We are only just beginning to understand this innate and willed process and how this affects us.

Within our gut sits a large neuro transmitter with massive amounts of serotonin, a collection of nerve bodies the size of a cat’s brain, how does that affect our reactions and defence against autoimmune, infection and our moods? Who knows?

We can cope with adverse situations by a positive attitude, but to change our whole body’s complexities, who are we kidding? Headless chickens spring up in my mind!

So where does this all leave people with ME? Flying our Polka-Dot-PANTS in the wilderness for now. But with your help things could change. NICE can be made to listen to good science and not PANTS science.

Our complex dots are ridiculed, discriminated against, demoralised, defaced and dehumanised in public, and we need to change that, with your support we can.

I don’t want anyone; let alone a young and venerable child to feel they have to be a super hero in order to receive treatments their body’s need. It is everyone’s right as a human, to be treated with respect.

I don’t want research carried out that has known damage. The Helsinki agreement needs to be upheld, it is there for good reason!

If you feel the same I would ask:

Are you brave enough to stand up against fabricating “Illness Beliefs”?
To stand up for disability, difference, suffering and hope?
Stand up for good doctors who “do no harm”
Stand up for good researchers that believe in open and honest science, and that have and still are proving all the physical dots of ME?
Stand up for the best care for patients so that our NHS gives the best advice and treatment?

Are you brave enough to stand up and proud against NICE?

Are you brave enough to Fly Polka-Dot-PANTS for ME?

Please put the pants as your status for one week to show your support as NICE debate ME future and that of 700 children that suffer the indignity of PANTS science




Tuesday 11 July 2017

NICE refuse to take down harmful treatments 25,000 children harmed?

I had my reply from NICE.


For some reason David Hahalam did not want to talk to me. Well I am not important, am I? After all I am just one of the 25,000 parents that would like ME taken seriously to protect the children from harm. A good solid diagnosis for a seriously abused illness, it would seem is too much to ask for. For them to understand, it is their responsibility to stop the emotional blackmail that goes on with CBT under their guidelines. Head against establishment wall I am afraid.

Perhaps they should note that CBT was no good in education and it would appear that in depression it is only a placebo effect, as explained by Oliver Burkeman in the guardian. So for a physical immune response, they are offering a Placebo treatment?


So here is their resonance and my thoughts in red. Please do add your comments in the comments box below.
Do you get the feeling they did not read my letter?

What will it take for NICE to do no more harm to children with ME?

How can they say no harm done if they have not asked those who have been harmed. Do we not learn from history?

When will NICE start listening to children and their parents, let alone the 250,000 patients who have been suffering decades of abuse at the hands of those reported to protect them.

What is the point of NICE to do no Harm?

This is the letter I have just sent to NICE, it is one of many. I sent it at 9.30 this morning 11th July 2017. Below is the one I have sent to my local MP, I will be sending this to all parties, so if you are reading this and you are in a party get in touch, PLEASE.

I don't expect to be listened to, but you have to try and maybe some of you will sign the petition from the ME Association and get involved?

http://www.meassociation.org.uk/2017/07/me-association-petition-the-nice-guideline-for-cfsme-is-not-fit-for-purpose-10-july-2017/


Dear Professor David Haslam, and Surveillance team,

Regarding the decision not to update the NICE guidelines on ME.

I am a mother of a child who has classic Ramsey defined ME. I have been coerced into giving my child CBT and GET against my better judgement. He went from 70% ability to a function of only 5%, for which I was blamed. I AM NOT ALONE IN THIS!

Through my due diligence and care, with an awful lot of research, attending Invest in ME conferences, talking to researchers like Ron Davis, Jo Cambridge, Fluge, Mella, Armstrong, Maureen Hansen, listening to Mark Van-Ness, speaking with Doctors such as Speight and John L Whiting who is working closely with Neil McGregor, my son is now able to get out of bed and have some normal but careful monitored activity around the house. It has taken years to undo the damage done to him from GET and CBT. 

The damage done to myself, and my family is immense, the words for which I do not possess.

Medical staff try to back me, they know of treatments that can help, but they are aware of the constraints imposed on them and enforced by PACE trial believers, that are more akin to a cult than a guideline for health. This should never be allowed to happen. Doctors, not allowed to treat and support patients with known helpful treatments like Vitamin D? Or ask for tests, this is outrageous in any civilised society. 

NICE should denounce the PACE trial, it is a flawed study on so many ethical grounds that you are fully aware of. PACE has been used to control, demoralise and harm those it states it helps, insisting the term CFS is used with no legitimate reason. There should be a public enquiry and I am sure in the near future there will be. 

PACE has been based on the theory of “Mass Hysteria”, “Illness beliefs” and “spiritual healing”. This then alludes that NICE believes in Mass Hysteria and spiritual healing and forgoes science, and ethical treatment? Would parents be allowed this flimsy theory to deny treatments? NO!

The inability of a ME patient to process energy causing the body to shut down, is beyond doubt. Considering the body needs energy for activity, this then makes it nonsensical to give a patient activity as treatment, so therefore both GET and CBT are abusive, and could be construed as torture? Infections rise in many places including the gut after exercise, this has also been proven, along with lactic acid increase. The guidelines are untruthful and therefore should be overhauled and I am appalled you do not seek patients/care givers views, as they are the only ones who truly understand ME, and yet never get heard. Yet we are taunted at every turn, and left to defend against harmful treatment and misdiagnosis on our own. NICE is directly responsible for this.

NICE have allowed the abuse of patients and the demoralisation of disability, this has caused many suicides and clouded the reality of this condition, and stopped furthering the biological research that was happening decades ago. No records of number of patients, harms, changed diagnosis, or deaths are recorded, why is that? When this should be a matter of course.

There are no treatments for ME, which is inexcusable considering the physical evidence of disease. NICE should be open to all research and not close down the guidelines at every opportunity, only listening to one group of researchers that have a discredited theory or belief. 

The guidelines have been used against parents and FII is a constant battle for families, where the NICE guidelines have been used to harm children, which you are fully aware of. It is then left to parents like me and charities that have no connections with the PACE trial or FITNET, MAGENTA or SMILE trial researchers, to support those parents as best we can. 25,000 children harmed, is unforgivable. The Centre for Disease Control in the USA have now taken both CBT and GET out of their recommended treatments, and have made sure it is clear that activity that causes symptoms should be avoided.

The term CFS is a manifested term along with Unexplained Medical Symptoms, which holds no science behind them, and used to confuse the danger behind many conditions. This manufactured term leads to misdiagnosis, confusion and ultimately death. 

Many ME patients have co existing conditions like cancer, brain tumours, diabetes, kidney failure, EDS, PoTS, OI all left untreated because of the term CFS and the PACE trial, as it alludes to no harm of exercise and that the patients are just stuck in a cycle of thinking they are ill. 

As with the America you should at least take CBT and GET from the guidelines, not to do so would put further children in danger of lifelong harm and disability. NICE guidelines should DO NO HARM. 

This is an open letter and as before, a copy of which, I will be sending to Countess of Mar.

I have also attached my letter to my MP, which I will be sending today, and will be attaching this email also.

Many Thanks for your time

Tina Rodwell

My letter to my MP:

Dear Jo Churchill,

I need your help and support as my MP to guide me through how to stop false accusations of Fabricating or Inducing Illness, for those parents, with children who have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME).

You may have heard the program on BBC radio four, 1File on Four about the way parents are treated, or the question being asked in the 2House of Lords by the countess of Mar? It is very frustrating to see the House of Lords frame a question about ME in the context of Medically Unexplained Symptoms. ME is not Medically Unexplained Symptoms, It is underfunded, lacks a test, and inappropriately treated but not medically unexplained, the history and research from all over the world shows you it is not dissimilar to Type 1 diabetes, most sufferers also have unknown aetiology.
There are many adults who like my son, where given Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) which took away their ability to live a normal life physically, and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), which took away all of their self-esteem and belief in self. If the first program from the same reporter 3 Matthew Hill “Sick and Tired” 4 1999 featuring Ean Proctor amongst others. In 2009 he explains what happened to him. Have we not learnt to listen to the children? If these experiences had been adhered to my son would be at a much better physical state and safe? Who knows living a normal life. Uan Proctors experiences are being relived in 2017. How have we let this happen?

ME is classified by the World Health Organisation as a neurological condition and is a disease of the Central Nervous System G93.3. You would never know this as most Doctors are ill-informed or given the wrong impression, and treat sufferers as mentally ill. This is both harmful physically; as the wrong treatment is given and psychologically; if you are asking from your body to do more than it can permit, you are left demoralised and feeling inadequate.

From the age of eight my son has suffered at the hands of this misinformation, and was inappropriately given CBT and GET, through the NICE guidelines as many are, 25,000 children are treated this way and no number collated unlike other illnesses. Doctor’s lack of understanding is partly due to misinterpreting the NICE Guidelines and my son slowly went from 70% function to 5% Bedbound. NICE are aware of the situation and have been for a very long time, and I feel if they had taken notice of the patients, then my son would have been saved the horrendous behaviour from the medical profession

NHS, who I have written to, along with NICE have dismissed many parents in my position. ME is one condition they do not allow the sufferers or carers to have a say in the guidelines, or in treatment; which surprises me due to lack of research and funding, our experience is of paramount importance? For decades we have been dismissed, this has to stop. Like the Grenfell tower our voices fall on deaf ears, and I ask at what cost to our country?

My son at the age of eight was told to take responsibility for his illness and recovery, not to talk about symptoms. He was also reminded many times; and in my view inappropriately, that I had to give up my job to look after him. Many times I have held him racked in pain, as he sobbed his apologies, wondering how the medical profession got so inhumane.

I was never listened to, or supported. Later we found out my son has celiac, PoTS, OI and hypermobile joints, all of which impact on his ME, and the symptoms of which they told us to ignore. He is not deconditioned his body has failed him, you could see his decline in a matter of weeks. He was active and then he was very ill. He is not avoiding exercise, for when able he runs like the wind, breaking free for a short time from his constant pain, dizziness, sickness, swollen glands like conkers, every joy comes with a “payback” Post Exertional Malaise (PEM) an inability to repeat exercise. It is quantifiable and testable, and for which a group of researchers deny and lack the ability to understand. He is not “fear avoidance” he grabs life by the throat, but laughing can send his HR into 200 beats per minute plus, this then takes days for his BP to settle back down, and like anyone oxygen staved, the consequences are severe.

I have witnessed him have hypoglycaemic like attaches, similar to those my Nanna Ann used to do before her diabetes was under her control. I have nowhere to go, because of the constant threat and real fear that any negative test, whatever they are, and who ever has asked for them, would probably put us further under peril of not being believed I can assure you it has been the scariest of times, for when you hold your child, concerned over their physical health with nowhere to go, and no idea what the end result of this severe episode will be - this is the relentless place I find myself in. Imagine having a child with diabetes and no one understanding the condition, worse still believing it is one of avoidance of life, and not the physical illness it is. Imagine the damage done to such a child not being given insulin when needed, due to lack of research into the illness. Told to exercise and control their symptoms with relaxation technicities that just don’t make sense of what you witness them physically going through, and you will get a good understanding of how I feel on a daily basis, on my own, with no support just ridicule.

They are working on how the ME patients bodies use energy, and what causes the many differences they find in bloods, cells and DNA, but because of the complexities and for many other reasons, as yet they have not found a good enough, or cheap and easy to do test to enable patients to regulate their energy levels, or doctors to confirm diagnosis. More than nine biomarkers are waiting to be funded.

Many mothers like me are forced to hide in silence. We hide because we are blamed, to get us off lists so they do not have to report harms or the worsening of condition after treatments or on trials? Over 200 parents have gone through FII, none have been charged with Fabrication or Inducing Illness. That fact should say, all there is to say, about how parents are treated when they have a child or worse, children with ME. But there is worse to come. We are called MUPPETS by a leading Paediatric in the CFS field, who researches a denounced psychological theory of “perpetuating illness belief”. This research has to stop, a data exercise should be undertaken of all children with ME to find out how many are house or bedbound, this will show the harm done by GET and CBT, as all children are forced to go through this treatment. A recording of all parents accused of FII when they have a child with ME should be undertaken. All government organisations refuse to collate numbers?
Researchers seem able to deny any research that shows how harmful over exerting can be. When they are challenged or asked questions, those that put forward those questions are called saboteurs or militants, however world renowned they are. We know the smearing that goes on behind our backs by some Doctors, Researchers, and Professors that have closed seminars, Universities and mental health professionals. Still we mothers do not buckle, we stay strong, supporting each other and we learn.

We learn how to handle the medical fraternity; we learn how to tell hospital staff when our children fall ill with chronic pancreatitis, kidney problems, cancers and many more co existing illnesses. We support the medical staff when they are at a loss what to do for our very sick children. We hold them as they crumble with no true information about this common illness, and as they realise they have been fed the wrong social landscaping, we teach them how to cope. Many good doctors are hounded by others when they support parents, this has to stop?

We hold each other, protecting each other, and supporting the best we can in educating the medical profession as our children slip away into the abyss of ME.

25,000 parents know the pain of ME, 25,000 children suffer in quiet dignity the humiliation of being told they are not ill like cancer patients, and they do not deserve medical help or support; yes that is said often in 2017 to our children. With over 9000 papers logging all the physical problems and testable differences of ME, with little to no funding in taking those possible biomarkers further, or replicating solid biomedical research. UK has done very little to none existent purely biomedical research. You cannot find what you are not looking for?

We shake our heads in disbelief when ethics committees pass yet another exercise research program that point the finger at parenting rather than the illness, knowing if diabetes did not have its blood test they would be treated just the same; exercise the symptoms away, change your brain function by positive thinking?

I need you to supporting me, to get ME recognised throughout Suffolk and the rest of the UK as the illness that it is; a complex one that effects every cell and system in the body, so that Education, Social Services, GPs and Paediatrics do not keep making false allegations of FII, and those that keep doing so get educated in the seriousness of this complex and chronic illness.

Then we need to give parents, carers and sufferers the correct information so that they can be supported through their child’s disabling illness, and find the best way forward with managing their child’s symptoms and condition, without fear, until such a time a robust biomarker has been funded and treatments can be tested against.

I have enclosed and email that I have just sent to NICE. They were due to change the guidelines to take out CBT and GET, but have now refused. It is worth noting that the Centre of Disease Control in the US have changed and have taken out GET and CBT as treatments, and noted that any activity that causes symptoms should be stopped.

I look forward to hearing from you as soon as you possibly can make it

2.     http://www.meassociation.org.uk/2017/07/countess-of-mar-and-lord-hunt-defend-mecfs-in-lords-debate-on-medically-unexplained-symptoms-05-july-2018/
Many thanks for your time

Tina Rodwell

Thursday 3 November 2016

A Normal Converstion

A Normal Conversation Between Heroes.

We take a normal conversation as such an everyday occurrence a minute to minute nothingness that happens all day every day and sometime we wished it would stop. This insignificant part of life we take for granted. If we feel down and despondent we talk to a friend, even a stranger can uplift our spirits with a single word or two of acknowledgment.
Imagine if this gift was taken away and you could only use it once in a month. What if listening to the TV is just too much? Cocooned in a leaden body wracked with pain? How do people cope? What makes them still have vitality and love a thirst for life? What keeps them so upbeat that it makes you incredible ashamed of your ever increasing needs, we need more than to be heard and to be listened to.
Naomi was forced into a get better by increasing small movements and can be seen in Voices from the Shadows http://voicesfromtheshadowsfilm.co.uk/welcome/reflections/

She has been left disabled, in pain and forgotten by the medical people that harmed her.

Caryn was 14 when she fell ill, sleeping mostly for the next couple of years. She was a little better from the age of 19 to 21, and then became bedbound after another illness. Her family has left her because of the continual misinformation portrayed by medical professions at Bath lead paediatric who researches ME/CFS Crawley, as in recent days with the enrolment of children for the MAGENTA trial; this idea that you can robustly increase yourself better with upbeat determination, is going to cause more children to be left in this near end life state, which, for some goes on for years.
These normal conversations that run on Facebook, the ones we dismiss out of hand, are where those who cannot be involved in normal life, go to have some normality. It can be proven that for a ME sufferer normal movement is the same as an athlete running the three minute mile. It takes a three hour battle just to enable some ME sufferers to sit up-right; some cannot sit due to their body not being able to tolerate an upright position. Each of these feats the one minute mile and sitting up, is a marvel of the body’s ability to battle against all odds, but ME suffers are treated like modern-day lepers, no one wants to know or be associated with them. If they try to tell their story or question the rational of trials, here in UK they are ridiculed beyond endurance by all news/media and doctor forums led by the researchers of the PACE trial.

On one of the odd occasions Naomi was able to connect on FB, she popped on my screen. It is always a joy to see her upbeat pictures and gentle wit. She is my hero of endurance. There on my screen was a message from Caryn, who quickly became another Hero. I haven’t changed much in her message, you can tell when her energy is low her spelling goes, and I know from experience how embarrassing that can be:

I am very similar to you. I live in the dark. My mobile is on a dim light. I can move my finger on my touch screen phone. I can squint my eyes to look. But I cannot talk as such very much. Very noise sensitive. I hardly ever have back ground noise like a T.V on. I love music. I often share a song on facebook I can’t listen to. So I don’t forget I love it, encase you see the same songs even if I don’t reply straight away. You are so strong.

Naomi replied:

Thank you Caryn. I feel very fortunate as I’ve improved from the level you’re at, and have some quality of life now. (Not by normal standards, but very much so in comparison to where I was) I know its absolute torture where you are. Surviving that is the real strength.

Caryn replied:

Thanks. I am happy you are bit better than you have been.

A simple loving conversation to support, by two people who wait a whole month to converse, hold that thought, in what state would your mind be in, if you were in their situation. Not able to reach out for your phone and be part of the world. Enclosed, cut off, abandoned by society, because they have been told they are “the undeserving sick” Yep that was actually said by the PACE trial theorists. Both these ladies have been ill for 10+ years! 10 years of living in this sort of confined pain.
Crawley believes this illness is started by an infection of some sort, and either a belief you are still ill, or you have not got enough sleep at night or exercised to keep your body fit, is why you are still behaving like you are ill. Could these two things be the only reasons that are keeping someone so ill? Now I ask you, does that seem right? Remember Crawley does no tests on these children even now proven evidence that ME patients bodies are fighting hard to survive. We hear of no other research that proves ME is a complex multi system disease, with a strong neurological element. Julia Newton has done some excellent work and Rituximab trials are exciting researchers worldwide, with our own Jo Cambridge doing some sterling work, but we don’t hear about this in the News or from the mouths of doctors, or on any interview?
My last conversation with Caryn who is all alone in the world:



And her having fun


Jess is another inspiration that could be helped with the new and upcoming research around the world, but she would not get better with MAGENTA trial:



















In the last few months I have heard of several cases where the hospital has rang the mother and this is the sort of conversation we as mothers have to put up with ‘they said it was ridiculous that I thought I couldn’t take my child to the appointment and what did I imagine would happen if I took her’

The mother was reported to her GP, who has referred mother to social services. Unfortunately it is impossible to put in complaints regarding child protection, as I have been informed responsibility lies with the person who made the referral. You as a parent have no one and it seems no rights. I don’t think Association for Young ME Suffers would want to help, against one of their medical advisers or the hospital they work with. So the battle still goes on.
There are no figures kept and unlike other abusive behaviour you cannot track who makes the allegations and how many they have made against innocent parents or how many are unfounded. Tymes Trust, kept busy and are the only safe option for mothers now. They are stretched to full capacity.

Dr Speight was taken to the General Medical Council, one doctor who has stood up for children who have been medically abused because the NICE guidelines are too fluid and can be abused.
Over 200 children are being recruited for MAGENTA trial and Yet Crawley does not know what is making the children ill, or how to diagnose ME, has no severe patients and asks what recovery is? Would you trust this sort of approach? Would you like to know all information before your child was put on a trial? Would you be suspicious if you were told not to investigate the facts? She says no harm will come to the children. Will these children get hidden like Naomi, Caryn and Jess? Will Crawley take full responsibility for the harm done to the children who partake in this trial, or will she be able to hide the information like the SMILE trial.

Mothers have sent petitions to AYME but they don’t respond, they take their messages down and we are gagged by every means possible, including hidden threats like the one given out for MEGA trial ‘You will be sorry if our trial does not go ahead’. Then in the media there is a rally call of so called nasty comments left on social media by ME sufferers. 

I ask you what would you do, if your child was harmed and were told to not tell the truth and keep harming them with the wrong treatment so social services don’t take your child away. Would you let the perpetrators keep harming brave children that just want a life, any life, other than at home on their own unable to play? As any parent I need to fight, is that wrong?

I am one of those 25,000 mothers. I am under threat every time I call a GP because my son is in pain or ill, or ask for tests even though it took 2-3 years to get diagnosis of coeliac or POTS, which as I had suspected came back positive. My son suffered an episode in the GP surgery of what I now recognise as PoTS and was rushed into hospital. Later I was made to feel foolish, even though it was not me that asked to go to hospital? 

They do not want to label a child with EDS they say, even though this condition is associated with ME and can have life threatening consequences, because the medical profession do not like the illness! All parents want is a proper diagnosis to support their child and regain their health.


Just a point of interest the PACE trial theorists say that allergies are the modern society’s way of blaming devils, apparently their theory is we need devils in our lives to blame, and you want me to trust them?

Do not forget ME

I just had a reply from BBC standard reply and no return the funny thing is they quote the same abusse on Wesssley and only one research paper in 2015 on Mady hornig as balanced reporting. 5000 + papers and research on ME and only one? Two on the harms done to researchers, says it all does it not BBC.

BBC its the same old stuff as PACE? Mixed researchers where or are they? Getting ready for MEGA already? Discussing ME is TOXIC? From which side/

Ebola only one person in UK gets funding and research. 250,000 people with ME 25,000 children and they get PACE trial and MAGENTA? With small studies thrown to Julia Newton, just to show willing?

Dear Mrs Rodwelll
Many thanks for getting in touch about BBC News.

Whilst we’re disappointed to learn that you were unhappy with our coverage, we'd clarify that this is the largest clinical trial of an intervention in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) / Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) and is being directly funded by the National Institute for Health Research (the research wing of the National Health Service). This makes it a significant story.

Our coverage has been a mix of why the researchers have decided to undertake the trial and the personal experiences of patients (particularly children) with the disease. The Association of Young People with ME – a charity that represents children with the disease – and the UK’s Medical Research Council both say there has been a lack of attention given to CFS / ME and that this trial is needed.

The BBC cannot ignore stories like this and has reported a broad range of CFS / ME research - including striving to find a biological cause in www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31644618; the difficulties along the way in www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15017660; the threats sent to people researching the field in www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14326514; and why discussing the disease has become so toxic in www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14883651.

We hope our reply here helps to clarify our approach. Many thanks once again for taking the time to get in touch.


Kind Regards

BBC Complaints Team
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

NB This is sent from an outgoing account only which is not monitored. You cannot reply to this email address but if necessary please contact us via our webform quoting any case number we provided.


Humm so are they 

Invest in ME are pushing for a Biomedical Center in the UK and have had to fight every obsticle, they are also doing a lot of biomedical research that if shining a light on this illness. If you can just give a pund I would be very greatful.


https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Tilly-Moments

Friday 4 March 2016

Of All The Silly Things

Of All The Silly Things

Of all the silly things they get you to do, bouncing on a ball while you’re eating your lunch has to be the most bizarre! Concentrating on your inner core, chewing while laughing has to be worth more than just an orange on your activity sheet?

How can I tell my teenage girl these people know what they are doing? That our government have our best interests at heart? It is blindingly obvious they do not! These silly ideas may look good written down on a sheet of paper, fooling people it will make them better, but in practice it is life threatening and I do wonder if they had a health and safety check on it. Before you all roll your eyes and let out the exasperated steam of boredom. Bouncing on a ball while eating, honestly, it doesn’t take Einstein to work out the equation for the consequences to that one.

You may ask me why we keep listening to them. I’ve asked myself that many times. You have to remember we are very desperate and we thought we were going to professionals in their field, not a load of monkeys wanting to enjoy a tea party, paid for by government! I’m not bitter, just gob smacked at the systemic stupidity!

It’s not the first time we have been forced into activities that we don’t understand the benefit of. There was that time they told me to get my daughter interested in the world around her. To get her to move around the house, which they considered was the first step to reengage with the world. You do this by doing the housework? They said it constituted an orange on the scale of energy needed. They smiled at us as though we could not understand the concept, and just needed to get on with it and they would be proved correct.

First issue I have with this is; housework – to get you interested in the world around you, really? My daughter does not have OCD so what joy of doing daily necessities would she derive from cleaning? OCD does figure in ME apparently, I suppose it depends in which area of your brain that has been affected; after all it is a neurological disease. They have always known it affects your brain, but do they understand the brain? That’s the question, from my experience, no they do not! Only recently some researchers have devised the right techniques to produce the imagery of damage caused by ME. Not all hospitals have the right equipment though and then you have to have the right person to understand the imagery.

Anyhow, for most young; bordering on teenagers would not reengage in the world around them by housework. I have to admit housework turns me off in life and against most of my family. I’ve seen to many mould festering plates and smelly football socks.

Dust and chemicals are known to affect ME sufferers, so I really don’t understand this, one little bit. I did start to wonder about the clinic we were attending. The person telling me how good this would be for my daughter looked more of a party animal than a home bird; I don’t think she would be too impressed if she was given this to try, I think she would look as stunned at the suggestion as we were.
Secondly they obviously did not watch “Trust Me, I’m a Doctor” out of all the gym activities housework burnt the most energy. The energy that would be used the most would be indignation though! And this is never taken into account! I think I would feel belittled and indignant if it was offered to me as part of the treatment for a disease that offers more pain than when you have run a full marathon, by just going downstairs! When energy is in short supply, do you really want to waste it on housework!

Rosa had always been brilliant at helping me out around the house. As a treat on a Saturday we would go out shopping, as a way of me saying thank you for all her help. The sadness of this particular suggestion brought home with a sledge hammer, how bad things had got and how much M.E had taken from our lives as a family. Going into town was a weekly treat, window shopping and then coffee and cake. Somehow these people are blinkered, and don’t understand people or their lives.

She also has a dust allergy and would sneeze; I wonder how much energy it takes to sneeze? I smile at the image of their reactive faces if I wrote that down on her daily activity sheet? I would say five sneezes would constitute a red activity. I wonder how that constant allergy would affect her body though.

I know it’s not for the fact she wanted to withdraw from the world, I know my daughter, but that she is simply too unwell. They insisted though, that it was the same for all CFS patients, it was part of the illness this deconditioning malarkey. I don’t buy it, but they should know better and in the beginning I was not listening to the people who had been through the system before us. The professionals had clouded my judgement about them. We were different and how could movement, talking, enjoying life make you ill? If you are happy and look to the future, it stands to reason that you will be OK. Little did I know back then!

Threading beads was another activity and when Rosa, then 10 asked what the point to that was, we got a reaction, which enthused the psychiatrist to write franticly down in her notes. We looked at each other with a silent conversation carried through widening eyes and wobbly eyebrows. These conversations normally take place when we meet with the medical team. We would discuss afterwards what a criminal psychologist would make of them all.

Let me just say it again, threading large wooden beads on a shoelace? When you’re ten? Slightly demoralising? Belittling? This is the treatment we deserve for a totally knackered body, immune system and every other system within your body? Even if they were to suggest making jewellery; which I did think of, it would not work. Threading beads sound innocuous but, you have to think and manipulate kinetically, this would take two energy factors, and yes, it gets that basic. 

Colouring books came next. The type that are used for stressed people. It is to put you in a hypnotic state and has been proved to help with brain flow, brain mapping and stress. So we gave it a go. The thing they just don’t get, is the pain and stress on joints when you are trying to do anything when you have M.E! A lot of M.E sufferers have hypermobile joints that hurt, and when you have a disease that also attaches them, this pain is doubled. After an activity, whether you enjoy it or not, you are left with more stress and energy burnt. They don’t listen or look at the individual they just give you silly things to try that sound half reasonable, hoping you will go away and get better. If you don’t agree with them and don’t get better then they start throwing accusations around.

Now most of these things are girly but friends of mine that have boys with ME are treated the same. Now don’t get me wrong I’m all for equality but it don’t work does it?
Doing crosswords and word searches was the next thing. This was suggested at the time Rosa could hardly see most days, she was dizzy and felt sick. Cognitively she found it difficult and this is one I never tried with her. Again it is to do with the brain and its function with lactic acid eroding away the brain cells.

So when they suggested the exercise ball, I didn’t think anything of it. I did question eating while you were on the ball, but they insisted that it would take Rosia’s mind of the pain of exercise, to help with her avoidance. It was useless to say that her reluctance was not due to her not wanting to exercise and that she was aware that new exercises brings aches at first; she was a gymnast. They just would not believe she would suffer the next week or so that pain would increase and possibly leave her bed-bound.

Well it made us giggle; there we were rotating gently as we made sure our posture was correct so that our inner core was correctly engaged, while eating a chicken sandwich. We tried not to laugh. When Rosia reached across to put her plate on the side of the coffee table, she had over reached and cramp had set in. Cramp is a constant problem for her muscles. The ball slipped and piece of chicken had got stuck in the back of her throat.

After I had performed the Heineken manoeuvre, she had been sick and I had given her pain relief, I vowed I would not listen to any more silly ideas. I knew however, they had the power to take everything away from us and make our lives more miserable then it was already. That to have the letters to the school to enable Rosa to be home tutored, so that she reaches her goal of becoming a vet we needed to keep the silly idiots on our side. You have no choice but to try!

She was bright, she was breezy, she was incredibly silly, but she was all we have, so we sat there with our eager faces on, in our multi disciplinary group meeting with our engaging persona, not daring to look at each other.

“Well Rosa the last time we met we discussed your efforts to get back to normal life how did you get on?”
Eager eyes looked over to her, I held my breath.

“Well it made me wonder?” They all lent in for the revelation, the breakthrough they had all been waiting for, she paused longer for effect. “About your health and safety record! Because eating while on an unstable surface is not the right thing to be telling your patients.” Their faces dropped into expressionless professionals, “however the trip to hospital” again she paused to draw out the full impact. “To stabilise my condition was worth it, I met a rather thoughtful and considerate junior doctor, who has found I have PoTS, Hypermobile joints and a problem with my heart, alongside my M.E.”

Their faces were blank, none of them believing what had just happened. M.E is defiantly the chronic illness that just keeps on giving.

The End

Emotions have been hijacked as propaganda to show M.E sufferers in a very disparaging way. What they forget to mention is that laughter, happiness and excitement are all activities and can change the chemicals in the brain, they also have an impact on the energy of a person with M.E. Sufferers know these emotions affect them, just as much as being sad at your predicament and anxiety that comes calling for no good reason and out of the blue.

A multi-disciplinary team must mean that, and it must be led by medical factors firstly and psychiatry secondly if psychiatry is needed at all. Your physical health has a direct bearing on your emotions.

David Tuller, a public health journalist found flaws in the trial which meant it should never have been published:


This was taken from the EDHS website:

A few patients diagnosed with somation/CFS/ME could have Ehler-Danlos Syndrome (a connective tissue disorder)
 http://www.edhs.info/#!symptoms/c1qvq
Patients who truly have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) do not benefit from (and could be harmed by) inappropriate exercise.  Exercise therapies can leave ME patients far more severely ill than they were before and sometimes in need of emergency care.  ME patients that are able to rest adequately in the early stages of the illness have the best prognosis. ME patients must strictly avoid overexertion to have any quality of life.

Taken from the Voices from the shadows:
http://voicesfromtheshadowsfilm.co.uk/me-cfs-and-research/

The dominant view promoted by the UK Government through its National Health Service, Medical Research Council and the Science Media Centre, has long been that although ME/CFS might initially be caused by a virus, accident or stress, the long lasting debilitating illness these patients suffer is, they say, merely the result of physical de-conditioning caused by a fear of activity or exercise and over-attention to symptoms. This claim ignores the large and growing body of research demonstrating a severe neuro-immune physical illness. It has had devastating consequences for patients as well as for doctors and researchers supporting a physical understanding of the illness who have been threatened with losing their jobs and in some cases have lost their jobs. An explanation of these contrasting views can be found in “Chronic fatigue syndrome: Harvey and Wessely’s (bio)psychosocial model versus a bio(psychosocial) model based on inflammatory and oxidative and nitrosative stress pathways” by Michael Maes and Frank NM Twisk at www.biomedcentral.com
For many years several million pounds worth of MRC research funding for ME/CFS has been allocated to studies run by psychiatrists and psychologists examining the usefulness of different combinations of management programmes more appropriate for behavioural and psychological conditions. These are cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which was  originally developed to treat depression, and graded exercise therapy (GET) which is also considered to be a valuable treatment for depression and de-conditioning. These ‘treatments’ for ME are actually management programmes. They are used extensively to support patients receiving medical treatment for illnesses such as cancer, whereas in ME/CFS these behavioural management programmes are being used as a substitute for proper medical treatment. Alarmingly these recommended ‘treatments’, particularly GET, has been found to exacerbate illness and increase disability in many ME patients, sometimes resulting in lifelong total incapacity. (Further reading can be found here: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov & www.iacfsme.org) There is a video from the ‘FDA: Development of safe and effective Drug Therapies for CFS and ME’ workshop with Prof Chris Snell an exercise physiologist talking about the objective measures that can be used to assess patients severe disability. Here on Day 2 Panel 3 



Lactic Acid and the brain

Shungu believes the increased lactate levels he has twice found in the brains of ME/CFS patients may result from reduced oxygen levels. He believes increased oxidative stress may release substances called isoprostanes which restrict the blood vessels in the brain. Those constricted blood vessels result in low oxygen levels (hypoxia), anaerobic energy production and the release of lactate.
In a small study Baraniuk subsequently tied increased brain lactate levels in Gulf War Syndrome to reduced cognition.  A subset of GWS patients with increased brain lactate levels prior to exercise demonstrated significantly reduced cognition after exercise. Baraniuk attributed the cognitive decline to the brains inability to utilize the lactate produced by the muscles during exercise.  The inability to use the energy resource that lactate presented resulted in the brain using anaerobic metabolism to try and meet its needs.


In PoTS, for some reason the autonomic nervous system doesn't function properly. There's a drop in blood supply to the heart and brain when you become upright.
In an attempt to compensate for this, the heart races and the body produces lots of the hormone noradrenaline (one of the hormones that prepares you for "fight or flight").

So what happens to people with oxygen levels that are taken from their brain for many reasons?