{"id":16672,"date":"2018-05-21T06:59:49","date_gmt":"2018-05-21T06:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/?p=16672"},"modified":"2018-05-21T06:59:49","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T06:59:49","slug":"inquest-ruling-young-drama-student-merryn-crofts-killed-by-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/inquest-ruling-young-drama-student-merryn-crofts-killed-by-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Inquest Ruling: Young drama student Merryn Crofts killed by ME"},"content":{"rendered":"

ME Association<\/strong> blog post by John Siddle, 18 May 2018: Inquest Ruling: Young drama student Merryn Crofts killed by M.E.\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n

A devastating disease that some experts insist is all in the mind led to the death of a young drama student, a landmark inquest today ruled.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Merryn Crofts, 21, weighed less than six stone and had spent the last three years of her life totally bed-bound with severe ME \u2013 an incurable condition that affects 250,000 people in the UK.<\/p>\n

The youngster was unable to take more than two teaspoons of food before suffering immense gut pain and vomiting, a coroner was told.<\/p>\n

Merryn, from Rochdale, today became only the second person in the UK to have M.E. \u2013 myalgic encephalomyelitis \u2013 listed on a death certificate.<\/p>\n

Despite being classed as a real neurological disease, many think the condition is not real \u2013 even within the medical profession.<\/p>\n

Merryn\u2019s mum, Clare Norton, sobbed as she told Rochdale Coroner\u2019s Court how her \u201cbeautiful\u201d and \u201cenergetic\u201d daughter was left wheelchair-bound and reliant on tube feeding.<\/p>\n

She said:\u00a0 \u201cAs a child, she was a bundle of energy. She didn\u2019t walk anywhere \u2013 she would hop, skip and jump.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was the kind of person that people gravitated towards. They wanted to be her friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was very social and loved drama. She was a total fashionista, a typical teenager. Her bedroom was a mess of clothes, hairspray and tan.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut she was also stubborn, and I think that helped her cope with her illness in a lot of ways. She never gave up.\u201d<\/p>\n

In August 2011, Merryn, then 15, was diagnosed with hives and swelling shortly after coming back from a family holiday in Mallorca.<\/p>\n

Tests in early 2012 revealed that at some point she had contracted glandular fever \u2013 a virus which can trigger M.E.<\/p>\n

Despite dozens of medical appointments \u2013 including mental health checks for panic attacks \u2013 Merryn\u2019s condition deteriorated as she suffered breathing problems, exhaustion\u00a0and excruciating hypersensitivity to touch, light and sound.<\/p>\n

She was eventually diagnosed with M.E. in the summer of 2012.<\/p>\n

The would-be theatre star, who was forced to wear an eye mask, also suffered from severe migraines, brain fog, slurred speech and persistent infections.<\/p>\n

Stomach problems, and problems swallowing, meant that her weight plummeted to just five-and-a-half stone.Coroner Katherine McKenna was told that Merryn could take on just 100 calories a day because her gut was in so much pain, and that, by 2015, even two teaspoons of nutrients were intolerable.<\/p>\n

Merryn was eventually fitted with an intravenous nutrition line but suffered intestinal failure and was given a terminal diagnosis in 2016.<\/p>\n

She died on May 23, 2017, just days after her 21st birthday.<\/p>\n

Mrs McKenna today concluded her cause of death as starvation caused by a withdrawal of supportive nutrition, caused by M.E. She described Merryn as someone who \u201cbore her suffering with dignity and good grace\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cMerryn had suffered with M.E. since 2012 which caused severe fatigue, gastrointestinal failure, chronic pain, global hypersensitivity, loss of mobility and function.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite extensive investigations no reason for her gastrointestinal failure which led to her reliance on supportive nutrition was found and it most likely it was caused by her M.E.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mum Clare, who attended the inquest with daughter Amy Williams and Merryn\u2019s stepdad Dave Norton, told of her long-standing belief that M.E. contributed to her death.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cWith M.E. the key symptom is post-exertional malaise. That means if someone\u2019s energy is pushed beyond what they can tolerate, it will trigger all their symptoms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best advice we were given was for Merryn to do just 50% of what she felt capable of.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Merryn didn\u2019t even have 50% to give. She was always crashing, so everything that happened to her kept pushing her further behind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pathologist Daniel DuPlessis said that a post-mortem showed low-grade inflammation of nerve roots. It was suggested that this inflammation could have made her bowel hypersensitive to processing nutrients.<\/p>\n

Dr DuPlessis pointed out that Merryn had inflammation of the ganglia<\/strong> \u2013 gatekeepers to sensations in the brain. A post-mortem into the only other UK death attributed to ME, Sophia Mirza, 32, in 2006, also found ganglionitis.<\/p>\n

M.E. expert at Salford Royal hospital, Dr Annice Mukherjee, said she was convinced that the illness was responsible for triggering Merryn\u2019s intestinal failure.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n

NB\u00a0 While it is possible that only 2 people have been recorded as dying of ME. Other people in the UK have had CFS listed as a cause of death on their death certificates, 1 known in Wales.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ME Association blog post by John Siddle, 18 May 2018: Inquest Ruling: Young drama student Merryn Crofts killed by M.E.\u00a0 A devastating disease that some experts insist is all in the mind led to the death of a young drama … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[4431,4430,4429],"class_list":["post-16672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-death","tag-inquest","tag-merryn-crofts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5qkYK-4kU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16674,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16672\/revisions\/16674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}