Today I’ve reached a new place on my extended walks!

Graded Exercise Therapy has been part of the assistance I’ve been getting from the Essex Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Service at Southend Hospital. By body wasn’t at all ready for exercise in the beginning and so this programme initially made things worse, especially because I’m quite a disciplined and overly achieving type of person. This in combination with being given some instruction means I can easily follow a rule like gospel and over-ride my body or my own feelings, (see the Graded Exercise Therapy post for more detailed info).

However, I like to believe you can take some good out of everything, so despite GET having it’s own public health warnings and short comings, it’s been useful for me to use in my “own”way, not as outlined in the NHS subscribed booklet way!

Walking with some goals, and using different landmarks can really help you focus, as long as you don’t push it, (I’ve been known). With breaks along the way and having built up each day, five days a week, minus setback / crash days, over eight months, I got to a new marker. It’s a grotty old pub, but I can now see Southend in sight and this encourages me to get to my goal of getting all the way to town soon.

Independence is a big thing for ME/CFS peeps, as often a lot of it’is taken from them because of mobility issues, financial issues and many others factors. So getting to a place where I can potentially shop and get around to longer destinations without relying on others is obviously a massive desire.

A lot of new achievements seem to be happening in the outside arena for me in January and over the last few months, since my major relapse in August. It just shows that this journey is not straightforward, it’s up, down, roundabout and squiggly but the one thing I’m learning is that changes do occur.

Keep on trucking!