My sister became ill with a virus when she was 9 years old. She never fully recovered and by the time she was ten she was unable to walk, go to school or leave the house. She spent many many months suffering with flu like symptoms, pain, and extreme nausea, unable to even get out of bed. She lay for months in a quiet dark room as she was hypersensitive to light and sound and too weak to move. Even a conversation with a friend would make all her symptoms worse.
My sister is twelve now and is still severely unwell. She still spends long periods of time unable to get out of bed. She misses school terribly. She would love nothing more than to be able to walk our dogs and go kayaking like she used to. She has to use a wheelchair on the few occasions that she is well enough to leave the house.

Myalgic encephalomyelitis ME/CFS is a neurological illness and can range from mild to severe. A significant number of people with ME/CFS are bed-bound, house-bound or can only walk short distances. One of the tragedies of ME/CFS is that it is effectively an invisible illness as so many are too ill to go to school, work, raise awareness of the illness or raise money for research.

The whole idea of "Walk (or Wakeboard) for ME" is that friends or family members do something that their loved one would love to be able to do but can’t. I am aiming to Wakeboard 50 kilometres in one day to raise awareness and to raise money to fund biomedical research into treatment and a cure for this horrible illness.

"....doctors do not treat us and science does not study us. How could a disease this common and this devastating have been forgotten by medicine?" Jennifer Brea ME Research UK believes that only biomedical research can find the causes of ME/CFS, improve diagnosis and treatment, and, ultimately, arrive at a cure. That’s why research is our focus. We've awarded 57 grants since 2000 and invested over £2.2million. But research is expensive and becoming more so every day. That’s the challenge we face, and that’s why we need your help.