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My maddening battle with chronic fatigue syndrome.

On my worst days, it feels almost demonic.

By Hermione Hobie, read by Albi Baldwin At the Croydon

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.

Thirty 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.

...