Category: Chronic fatigue

  • Ep 10: Progressive weakness and loss of sensation

    In episode 10 of James and Ashley Stay at Home, we get real serious – or as serious as it’s possible for James and me to get. We talk about our respective diagnoses and how these illnesses erupted in our lives. James has chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, a neurological disorder that’s quite rare. CIDP has […]

  • Ep 9: The healing power of creativity

    When we invited Karin Foxwell on James and Ashley Stay at Home, she said, ‘my work as an art therapist is the best job in the world.’ Art therapy is a creative form of counselling, as Karin describes. Her work focuses on military and emergency service personnel who live with PTSD as an after-effect of trauma […]

  • Falling victim to medical gaslighting

    Since getting diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome in 2017, one of the most helpful things has been learning specific terms that describe aspects of the illness. I think this is partly because the existence of a given term is proof I’m not imagining what I’m experiencing. It’s real, and other people have experienced it – […]

  • Ep 6: Our Man Booker contenders

    Episode 6 of James and Ashley Stay at Home features James and I sharing our early experiences as writers – which always make for entertaining stories – and three tips we’ve learned along the way. You can listen to it here. James wrote his first novel at age seven. Frankly, it sounds like a masterpiece […]

  • Ep 3 ‘Not hiding my scars anymore’ with author Lee Kofman

    ‘I didn’t die because my parents bribed the surgeon that was supposed to operate on me not to operate on me … He had a nickname of The Butcher.’ In episode 3 of James and Ashley Stay at Home, we speak to author and writing teacher Lee Kofman about her creative non-fiction book Imperfect: How […]

  • Podcast: James and Ashley Stay at Home

    Podcast: James and Ashley Stay at Home

    Listen on Apple podcasts | Spotify | Stitcheror your favourite podcast app James and Ashley are staying at home. Partly because there’s a pandemic, partly because they’re writers, and partly because of their health. Through discussions and interviews with other writers and creatives, they’ll explore how staying at home has its benefits.James and Ashley Stay at […]

  • Conversations with Friends

    Conversations with Friends showed up as a surprise in the post. A friend sent it to me. Sally Rooney has won multiple literary awards. I’d read her second book, Normal People, earlier in the year, when everyone was talking about it. And while I recognised the writing as brilliant (and so crisp and well wrought, […]

  • Podcasts to see you through

    As you know, giant sea monsters have attacked our cities. While it’s not clear how many people they’re eating, it is clear that the safest thing to do is stay inside.  While you’re inside for the foreseeable future, you might as well listen to some high quality podcasts. Lately I’ve been trying lots of new […]

  • Life: Cancelled

    I’ve been really sick. It’s not COVID, just a bad stretch of my normal chronic fatigue. Usually I try to find the humour in things. I use humour to cope with life. But over the past few years, life seems to be working hard to beat the humour out of me. I started doing stand-up […]