Yasmin is 38 years old and was diagnosed with ME / CFS during her early thirties. She first noticed that she was too tired to go to the park with the children and therefore asked her partner to accompany them out. She feels guilty about not always being able to be active with her children but does her best to save up energy by resting so that she can then go with them for energetic days out on her good days.
This now means that some days she has to rest in bed after being exhausted by long periods of activity. Yasmin has a part-time job but is finding it increasingly difficult to cope with this too. She finds it difficult to concentrate and she notices that she keeps making mistakes at work such as forgetting to send her boss the spreadsheet that she asked for. When back from work she feels so worn out that she falls asleep immediately, but then she can’t sleep at night and is tired the following day.
She is trying her very best to cope, but she finds that she has to cut one activity after another from her life. The first thing to go was coffees with friends. Noisy cafés were difficult to tolerate because of her brain fog and unfortunately no matter how many things she stopped doing her fatigue did not get better and now her life mainly consists of sleep and work.
With time her quality of life has reduced and her mood is worse and worse.