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Laura’s Pen presents a comic for ME Awareness that demonstrates the difference between energy and exertion in a healthy person and someone with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis…

Today is ME awareness day, and to make a change I thought I’d make a comic. When I decided to do this I didn’t quite realise just how long it would take and how many spoons, but hopefully it’s worth it.

Introducing Maddie, a girl with ME, who in this episode, Energy and Exertion, is meeting her friend, “Normal” Nancy, for coffee. Let’s see what happens…

I find explaining Post-Exertional Malaise to people to be incredibly difficult and this is the reason I set about creating this comic. It is hard to see how truly ill a person is when the worst of it happens behind closed doors.

However, something I would like to add is that there is also a lot going on beneath the surface of someone with ME when they are over-exerting themselves like this even though they may seem okay.

They may be struggling with the noise of the chatter around them, the bright lights, or just the energy needed to follow a conversation. I tend to feel quite shaky and overwhelmed when I am out, which is a very clear warning sign that I am over-exerting and will suffer for some days following.

It is a shame that Maddie is yet to go on any more adventures, but creating her turned out to be a very exhausting task and took a long time to recover from. Hopefully, you can understand why after reading the comic!

I hope you enjoy my comic and hope that it has raised a bit of ME Awareness. It can also be found on The Mighty, where they have made a short video out of it (at the bottom of the page).

If you would like to print the comic to share in a public place or to give to other people, a lady called Von Jones has made my comic into a printable version.

Many thanks for reading,

Laura’s Pen

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