Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6
ME in adults is associated with measurable changes in the central nervous system and autonomic function and injury to the cardiovascular, endocrine and other organs and systems. The belief that [ME] is a psychological illness is the error of our time.
(Dr Byron Hyde, ‘The Complexities of Diagnosis’, in Leonard A. Jason, Patricia A. Fennell and Renée
R. Taylor [eds.], The Handbook of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome [Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003]).
I can still remember it quite well. It was Sunday, 5 August 1990. I was looking out of the window of my room on the fourth floor of the nurses’ home at Llandough hospital, just south of Cardiff, watching my parents leave. Knowing that I had to be there by the Sunday evening, we had driven to Cardiff during the afternoon, had a picnic tea, gone to the evening service at the church I hoped to attend, and then found our way to the nurses’ home. It felt a bit strange watching Mum and Dad drive off, but I was looking forward to starting my nurse training, living away from home for the first time, making new friends, learning new skills.
The next morning my fellow students and I had to be up early to catch the minibus to take us to the School of Nursing at the University Hospital of Wales (UHW), which was the other side of Cardiff from Llandough. Most of my group were actually living at the UHW, but for some unknown reason a few of us were housed in the nurses’ home at Llandough. I had been to the UHW the previous year for an interview, but had not even heard of Llandough until I was told I would be living there!
The first week was really just to get to know the others in the group, get to know the tutors (who all seemed quite nice), learn a bit about what to expect during the course, and hopefully start to find our way around. On the Monday, less than twenty-four hours after arriving, I discovered that there was a Christian Union group at Llandough hospital which was meeting that very evening, so I got to know a few of the Christians at the hospital right from the start. The week went well until the Friday afternoon, when we went to the Occupational Health (OH) department to discuss certain health issues and to have various vaccinations. Happily – or so I thought – the only one I needed was the first of the course of three Hepatitis B vaccines.
I had previously had other vaccinations without any problems, but around ten minutes after having that first Hep B vaccine, I collapsed. The staff in the Occupational Health department were not very helpful (to put it mildly), so it was left to a few of the people from my group to help get me back to my room at Llandough. I was thankful that one of the ambulance cadets who lived on the same floor offered to keep an eye on me overnight – I had knocked my head as I collapsed, so as well as having had a bad reaction to the vaccine, I was concussed.
Normally under such circumstances, I have no doubt that Mum and Dad would have rushed over from home to make sure that I was OK. Unfortunately, they were away at the time, cooking for a large beach mission team in Scarborough. However, a couple from the church in Cardiff very kindly put me up in their home, even though they didn’t really know me. Their GP came out to see me, confirming that I had had a bad reaction to the vaccine and was suffering from concussion, and saying that there was very little I could do about it, except to wait for it to wear off. For the first few days all I wanted to do was sleep, so Mum and Dad made the decision to leave the beach mission in Scarborough and take me back home. The team leader assured them that they would be driving home ‘on prayer rather than on petrol’.
I was unwell for five weeks after that first Hepatitis B vaccination. Looking back, it was like a ‘mini ME’ – not that I knew anything about ME then—with my main symptoms being an overwhelming exhaustion and lack of energy, muscle pain and balance problems. However, I made a good recovery, but, as I had missed more than five days during the first two months of training, I was told that I couldn’t rejoin my nursing group; I would have to restart the course completely. Fortunately there was a space available at the end of September, so I didn’t have very long to wait.
It was just at this time that the style of nurse training was changing. Up until this time, the training had taken place mainly on the wards, with a couple of weeks ‘in school’ every few weeks; it was soon to change to the other way around, mainly in the classroom with placements on various wards. The group I was to join at the end of September was the final group of the old style, on-the-ward training, which I was relieved about. I couldn’t see – and still can’t see – how it is possible to learn to be a nurse whilst spending most of the time sitting in a classroom. Although it is the method now in use, it wouldn’t surprise me if sooner or later it changes back to the old way of training.
During those few weeks back at home we tried to find out a little about what could have happened with the vaccine, causing me to collapse, but we didn’t really get anywhere. Mum spoke to one doctor at the Occupational Health department who simply said that no one became ill following any of their vaccinations, and that was that! A doctor who saw me about ten days after the incident was amazed at how little the staff at the OH department had done when I collapsed – particularly that I had not been seen by a doctor and no observations had been taken. This was a bit annoying, and didn’t help in trying to find out what had happened, but as I had by this time recovered I wasn’t worried and just tried to focus on restarting my course.
