Beth Dobbin is so determined to raise awareness of the illness that has decimated her life that she is speaking out, despite knowing it could trigger a brutal deterioration in her health.
Five years ago, she ran for Great Britain at the Tokyo Olympics. Now, at 32, she spends more than 22 hours a day in bed.
“I’ve done little things like attend a blood test at the doctors and been in bed for months after. So doing this interview, chatting away for 30 minutes, that could have an impact on me in 2027,” she says.
“But I felt like it was really important to do that to get the message out.”
She now only gets out of bed to eat and use the bathroom.
Dobbin has been diagnosed with ME, or myalgic encephalomyelitis – a chronic, fluctuating disease, causing symptoms such as sleep problems, problems with thinking and memory, pain and severe, persistent fatigue that does not improve with rest, and more.
A conversation, or even something so simple as a light too bright or a sound too loud, can cause a “crash” that lasts 24, 48 hours, or in the worst cases, months on end.
This year, Dobbin has left the house on just five occasions.
“It’s life-decimating like I can’t even put into words,” she says. “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.”
For Dobbin it all started with back-to-back Covid and glandular fever infections in the winter of 2021-22. She had not been unwell with either, only discovering she had contracted both through retrospective tests.
She had been sleeping a bit more and her running times were slightly down, but nothing that raised alarm. As time went on, she noticed soreness in the glands of her neck and armpits and a general sense of not quite feeling herself.
British Athletics doctors ran tests that gave no answers, so she carried on, assuming it was lingering glandular fever that would eventually pass.
She qualified for that year’s World Championships, Commonwealth Games and European Championships in what was an unusually condensed season owing to the backlog from the pandemic.
Her health progressively deteriorated. At the Worlds, she struggled with a painful throat and was waking at unusual times in the night. At the Commonwealths, she was dizzy while running and her body was more sore than normal.
At the Europeans, she false-started after losing all feeling in her legs while in the blocks. She spoke of her “year of hell” in an emotional interview with BBC Sport after that race.
