2026-04-06
34 分钟This is The Guardian.
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My maddening battle with chronic fatigue syndrome.
On my worst days, it feels almost demonic.
By Hermione Hobie, read by Albie Baldwin.
Croydon secondary school I attended in the late 1990s.
The deputy headmistress was a stocky woman with a military haircut who patrolled the corridors
in voluminous outfits patterned in shades of brown.
The outfits were much discussed, not charitably, by the teenage girls in her charge, as was her voice,
which made you think of a blunt knife being drawn across a rough surface.
30 years later, I can still hear that terrible voice refer to my mystery illness.
In truth, the deputy headmistress never actually spoke those words.
They were included in a typed letter she sent to my parents concerning my prolonged absence from school.
Still, the indicting force of five syllables is as distinct in my ear as if she were looming over me.
I was 11, and after coming down with a normal-seeming virus, I simply hadn't got better.
Instead, my system seemed to have become stuck, sunk into some grey, unchanging state.
I had a headache, a sore throat and swollen lymph nodes, body pains both dull and sharp, fatigue and weakness,
plus something I later learned went by the name of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome,
a faintness and momentary blacking out upon sitting or standing up.