From my experience of ME/CFS there was no psychological component whatsoever, besides which exercise, if anything, was making me worse not better. I was not deconditioned or frightened to exercise. The symptoms were more consistent with a brain tumour or multiple sclerosis. The reality is ME/CFS is a serious, heritable, neurological condition and I was shocked to discover subsequently that my grandmother had died from it aged 42.

The BMJ describes ME/CFS as “Often triggered by a viral infection ME/CFS can be distinguished from medical and psychiatric conditions by the presence of debilitating fatigue for more than 6 months; combinations of cognitive dysfunction, total body pain, unrefreshing sleep that does not restore normal function and post exertional malaise”.

I couldn’t work, read or watch TV, I could barely walk and digest my food, I couldn’t even look after my own children. Every time I tried to do anything challenging, whether mentally, physically or emotionally, I would experience severe symptom exacerbation, plus flu-like sore throats and head and neck pain which would render me bedbound for days, weeks or months after the event, which is known as post exertional malaise. Nearly 86% of patients who underwent GET combined with CBT reported a worsening of symptoms.

ME/CFS is not a rare illness, so how could doctors be getting it so wrong? Have we stopped believing in an entire class of patients for whom we don’t yet have the technology to diagnose or drugs to prescribe? I was not surprised to read that 90 per cent of cases of ME/CFS are thought to go undiagnosed, suggesting that people with ME/CFS are substantially undercounted, underdiagnosed and undertreated.