{"id":32307,"date":"2021-08-08T08:49:36","date_gmt":"2021-08-08T07:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/?p=32307"},"modified":"2023-02-11T15:10:05","modified_gmt":"2023-02-11T15:10:05","slug":"introducing-wames-volunteer-with-severe-me-michelle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/introducing-wames-volunteer-with-severe-me-michelle\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing WAMES volunteer with severe ME: Michelle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introducing WAMES trustee & social media volunteer: Michelle Penny<\/strong><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hello, my name is Michelle.<\/p>\n

\"\"

My life!<\/p><\/div>\n

I was diagnosed with ME at the age of 10, although it is thought I may have had the condition for about 2 years before that. I have now had diagnosed ME for approaching 28 years.<\/p>\n

I started off mild to moderately affected but after a course of graded exercise my health worsened and I became severely\/very severely affected and I have been totally housebound since 1999. I have become worse over the years and have been around 95% confined to my bed for the past 12\/14 years.<\/p>\n

I started volunteering with WAMES back in 2001.\u00a0 I have had different roles within WAMES over this time but have always needed considerable help and support to carry out those roles.<\/p>\n

I started as the children’s officer even though I couldn’t and still can’t speak to anybody over the telephone. I used to do all my contact via email as it was easy for me do as much or as little as I could cope with.\u00a0 Sometimes this was only less than 5 minutes at a time. As I said I have always needed considerable support.<\/p>\n

The support I need has increased over the years but I still like to do my bit. I have had help from many people over the years, including and especially from Dr Nigel Speight who was my saviour, and it is nice to pay that help back if I can.<\/p>\n

\"\"Over the past few years my health has deteriorated more and I can do even less than the 5 minutes at a time than I was able to do on occasions.\u00a0 I have developed an interest in computer aided graphics (totally self taught) so I design and draw with my computer a lot of the WAMES graphics you see now.<\/p>\n

I also help my mum (who is also a volunteer with WAMES) with computer problems! She is not very good at all with a computer. As she says herself ‘she is very trying’! She has been my support and my go between with the professionals throughout my illness, no matter how hard that gets at times!<\/p>\n

ME is such a misunderstood condition and I look forward to the day when people with ME no longer have to undergo the degrading treatment that they do at present.<\/p>\n

Read other volunteers’ stories<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mia<\/a><\/p>\n

Jan<\/a><\/p>\n

Sharon<\/a><\/p>\n

Tony<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introducing WAMES trustee & social media volunteer: Michelle Penny   Hello, my name is Michelle. I was diagnosed with ME at the age of 10, although it is thought I may have had the condition for about 2 years before … 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":[165,36,2716],"class_list":["post-32307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-michelle-penny","tag-severe-me","tag-volunteers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5qkYK-8p5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32307","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=32307"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38361,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32307\/revisions\/38361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}