One in 250 readers of The Northern Echo is likely to have myalgic encephalomyelitis.

To mark ME Awareness Week, health editor Barry Nelson meets a young woman whose life has been blighted by the condition.

NATALYA Davison vividly remembers the day that changed her life. She hesitates to say ‘the rest of her life’ because, as an eternal optimist, she believes that if she stays positive, her debilitating condition won’t get the better of her.

It was just before Christmas 2005 when Natalya, then 31, went on a shopping spree in her home town of Yarm.

“I decided to take advantage of the late-night Christmas shopping offers and ended up scrambling from one shop to another, piling up the presents, parcels and carrier bags full of goodies.

Exhausted, but exhilarated, Natalya returned home and ‘hit the sack’ as soon as she could. She can remember thinking she felt unusually tired, “an overwhelming sense of fatigue”, but thought nothing more of it.

When the alarm went off at 6.45am the next morning, Natalya realised something strange was happening. “I had to set it to snooze for an extra half an hour because I couldn’t focus properly.

My head felt groggy and my body felt heavy, like a bag of cement,” she says.

Half an hour turned into an hour, then another hour. Natalya realised she wasn’t going to make it work in Redcar in time. She phoned work to let them know she would be in later.

“I couldn’t understand why I felt so dreadful, physically and mentally,” recalls Natalya, who is now 35.

She struggled to get out of bed and into the shower. “I could barely stand up straight, I kept feeling like I was going to pass out and my arms seemed to have locked at the elbows,” she says.

NATALYA spent another two hours just sitting still on the sofa in her dressing gown before she could summon enough energy to get dressed.

“The half hour commute to work seemed like an eternity, along with the five-minute walk from the car park to the office.”

Struggling up the stairs to her office, she got stuck on the third step and needed her colleagues to help her.

“We were all laughing at the time, but I was actually very concerned about the severe pain and discomfort I was feeling,” she says.

By January 2006 her work and personal life were being disrupted by her constant sickness, severe muscle seizures, inability to concentrate and an intense apathy, which had consumed her mind and body.

Her GP subjected her to a wide range of tests and in April 2006, concluded she had ME, or myalgic encephalomyelitis.

ME is a long-term, fluctuating illness, also known as chronic or postviral fatigue syndrome. According to the charity, Action for ME, symptoms include overwhelming exhaustion, muscle pain, headache, sleep which does not refresh, poor memory and concentration and digestive problems.

Around 250,000 people in the UK are believed to have ME and up to one in four become so severely ill that they are housebound or bedbound.

A couple of months later Natalya’s diagnosis was confirmed by a rheumatologist, who suggested she might have contracted ME after having viral penumonia as a child or when she had viral meningitis at university.

On a personal level, Natalya benefited from the support of a new partner, Kevin Moyse, who she says has become her “rock”, but as her condition worsened, she was forced to take more and more time off work. “I became more and more incapacitated by the gradual decline in my health.”

In the summer of 2007, Natalya was offered redundancy. “At the time, this made my depression and feelings of utter frustration and futility even worse, but I was determined not to give up,” she say.

Dependent on benefits and her partner, Natalya, who recently moved to Marley Hill, near Gateshead, could have just given in, but instead she researched her illness and became a member of the Action for ME charity.

Two of their books, All About ME and Pacing for People With ME soon became her “self-help bibles”.

While her illness is ever-present, Natalya says she is trying to adopt a more positive attitude to life. She plans to resume correspondence with friends and family and is determined to complete a novel which she began writing nearly four years ago.

Natalya is one of many ME sufferers whose photograph and life story is featured in a website set up by Action for ME to mark ME Awareness Week. The Faces of ME campaign aims to show that people of all ages and backgrounds can be affected by the illness.

While there is no cure, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence recommends three treatments: pacing, or managing your energy wisely; cognitive behaviour therapy, which can help people feel more in control of their illness, and graded exercise therapy.

Other ways to help might include medication to control symptoms such as sleep problems or pain and some people find that if they make changes to their diet it helps their symptoms.

The fact that Natalya’s last two GPs took her condition seriously was really important to her.

"Having my ME recognised as a legitimate illness has given me a more constructive perception of myself which should help in my recovery in the long-term," she says.

■ For more information about ME and the Faces of ME campaign visit afme.org.uk or call 0845-123-2380.