Damian’s Journey – IBM

Val Dempsey. Everybody has a story that is significant in their lives and I don’t believe my story is any more significant than any other. But I do accept this is my personal moment and my experience, such as it is. I am grateful to have had a fairly healthy life with nothing outstanding happening…

It all began when I was nineteen years old. I had become very tired and suffered from headaches almost every day. I was skipping university, waking up in the afternoon and staying in bed all day. One night I was sitting in the car and felt pain in my left leg, mainly between the crease…

In 2020 at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, I was in lockdown and doing lots of walking to maintain some fitness. I was also taking statins for high cholesterol.  My muscles and tendons started to hurt. I lost all strength in my legs, hips and eventually my arms and upper torso. When I stopped…

My Journey. I was a happily retired 69 year old woman in around September 2019.  My husband and I had just finished a half lap of Australia, from Victoria, through South Australia to the Northern Territory, then across to Western Australia and down the west coast, across the Nullarbor and home to Victoria. I was…

It is said that stress plays a large part in auto-immune disease. There were three stressors in my life – the death of my Father, the death of my first dog, and a bad diet. My DM kicked in immediately after Dad died – I was having a swim the day after his funeral, and…

I used to play football and was known for my running speed but, at 43 years old I discovered I couldn’t run. That was in the mid 1990s.  Progressively over a few years I realised that I was losing strength. In 1998, I bought a pushbike to try to improve my quads. I would ride…