In 2021, while we were still in and out of Lockdown, I rather unexpectedly got diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

I’d known something was wrong for over a year by this point: I was tired all the time, my muscles ached after very little exertion, and I was only able to tell my flatmate and best friend Andrew that ‘my brain has changed’ – I didn’t know what I was experiencing was occasionally intense brain fog.

Honestly, at certain points, I thought I must be dying, but that no medical professional was confident enough to tell me. Then a fabulous local doctor went through all my medical notes over the past couple of years and found the answer. So now I knew it was fibromyalgia. Then I realised it could be lifelong, and there was no cure. This was, pretty much, it.

I wasn’t able to go back to my after-school drama teaching when everyone else started going back to work – I was too tired and achey. I got into a pattern of a better-suited diet and exercise for my problems, but I still eventually lost my Saturday drama teaching job as well. When you’re an ambitious person who likes actually getting stuck into things, your own body not letting you is horrifically depressing.

In the late Spring of 2023, Andrew told me about Oxygen Therapy, which he’d heard of before. He’d done some research and had heard some positive feedback from those who were experiencing fibromyalgia, or, as he had at the time, Long Covid. I was worried a little that he was clutching at straws – we’d signed up to do a one-woman show up at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which would’ve seen me doing twenty-odd one-hour shows tirelessly. It was a lifelong dream of mine to take my own show, but we were both incredibly nervous as to how we would do and hold up under the strain of it all – not just the performances themselves, but a commute, promoting, networking, even keeping ourselves fed and making sure the regimes that were making a difference to us were upheld…

We came and had a full month of daily oxygen sessions. The first couple of weeks simply saw me sleeping a little better – yes, Fibromyalgia, though a condition that mimics Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, can actually make it harder for you to get good quality sleep, or even let your mind shut down for the night at all. It was after those first couple of weeks in June that I really started to notice the difference. I carried on into July with weekly visits, and we both scheduled to keep up the sessions though we were away.

The brain fog drastically improved; I was able to write and edit my own work again. I started physical rehearsals for the show (which I had been dreading). Somehow the words were going in my head and staying there again. I’d been warned it was not going to be a miracle cure, but it certainly felt like it by the time I got to Edinburgh and was not only able to perform, but have a wonderful time while doing it.

I visit at least once a week for an oxygen session when I am able – just before Christmas I was able to get in two sessions to keep me going, and managed, much to my own amazement, to travel out of county to see family over the festive season by myself. I never would’ve considered it even possible nowadays, even this time last year, but I can’t recommend Oxygen Therapy enough to anyone considering it who’s experienced similar problems. I’ve got my brain back – fearing I was going to feel like I could barely think for the rest of my life would’ve been my own personal Hell; my energy has generally increased, is much more reliable and easy to manage… and even those pesky muscle aches have been beaten back into submission. I’m so glad I took Andrew’s advice, and seeing as he’s done it all with me through his Long Covid into his own fibromyalgia diagnosis, I know he’d tell you the same.

It’s so good to have some quality of life and, almost better, some Hope back.