Former Team GB sprinter Beth Dobbin, who raced at the Olympics in Tokyo five years ago, now spends more than 22 hours a day in bed after being diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), an incurable illness. She has left the house on only a handful of occasions since January.
Life-decimating impact of ME
The disease causes extreme fatigue that can last for months, known as a 'crash', and has no known cure. It also brings symptoms including insomnia, problems with thinking and memory, nausea, headaches and pain.
Dobbin, who announced her retirement from athletics earlier this year as a result of her diagnosis, opened up about her experience in an interview with BBC Sport. She said: "It's life-decimating, like, I can't even put into words. I feel like I've lost everything. I have still got my family, but I've lost my independence, my health, the ability to work, the ability to exercise."
Decline after viruses
Her ordeal began when she tested positive for COVID-19 and suffered from glandular fever during the winter of 2021/22. She began to notice symptoms including soreness and sleeping more, although tests gave no further answers.
Her health continued to decline in the summer of 2022, a period she described as a "year of hell". As a result, her form suffered and she false-started at the European Championships when she lost all feeling in her legs on the blocks.
Dobbin recalled: "When the Europeans had finished, I had this huge rest and the symptoms were just piling on. Things were getting worse and worse. I was struggling to stand up, I was sleeping loads, in bed all the time. After six weeks, I went back to training. I managed three weeks. [Doctors] were just really shocked that I still wasn't doing well and I'd had these viruses months ago."
Bleak outlook but hope for future
Explaining her physical symptoms, Dobbin said it feels like her body is completely shutting down and that she is "a few days from death". While the fatigue has prevented her from leaving the house more than a few times this year, she insisted that it was only just in her "top 20" symptoms.
"Even things like sitting up for a prolonged period of time can take it out of me so I prefer to be just propped up in bed, and that doesn't mean I feel fine," she said. "It doesn't get rid of my symptoms, but it makes them less hellish."
Asked what her future could look like, Dobbin replied: "It's very bleak, unfortunately. The only positive thing really to say is that Covid happened six years ago now and it's like the whole medical community has woken up. There will be something, I hope, in the future. I said I wanted to speak about it. It's not necessarily that I want to discuss it [but] it's raising that awareness. And unfortunately, athletes are believed a lot more than the average person."
