When doctors are idiots

By Jolene Cargill, Scottish Daily Record, Oct 28 2010:

TEENAGER Eilidh Berwick faces a gruelling battle to cope with everyday tasks.

The housebound 15-year-old is totally dependent on her parents to feed, dress and wash her.

But despite a diagnosis of ME - or chronic fatigue syndrome - the teenager found many doctors dismissed her crippling symptoms as being all in her head.

At one point, a specialist even suggested Eilidh be referred to a psychiatric unit.

Her mum Carol, 46, said: "When they talked about her going into hospital we thought they meant a specialist ME ward but it was a psychiatric ward.

"When I took her to the GP he said, 'Right, that's enough of all this' and told Eilidh to go and run round the building three times."

Minutes later dad Blyth, also 46, found Eilidh outside in a distressed state but the GP wouldn't accept that she couldn't carry on.

Carol said: "He told her to run through the waiting room. After that, they said she had chronic fatigue syndrome and would recover in six months."

Four years on, her parents had to fight to stop Eilidh being treated as a psychiatric patient. Now the family, from Glenrothes, Fife, complain doctors seem to have washed their hands of them.

Carol said: "The paediatrician told us the ME has been dealt with and it's all down to anxiety. They always fudge over the physical illness."

But, for Eilidh, the daily struggle with her condition is far from behind her. She has to be bathed in a chair because she gets so dizzy she cannot support herself.

Carol said: "Her dad and I have to hold her up, so she wears a bikini for privacy and we strap her in so she can sit on the toilet. She has no dignity."

The year after Eilidh was diagnosed, a consultant prescribed physiotherapy for her. But, soon after the first course, her health collapsed.

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