(Michael Marshall/ Nature) — When Claire Hastie fell ill in March of last year, she reacted the way she usually would to a minor ailment: she tried to ignore it. “It started off incredibly mild,” she says. “I would normally have paid no attention to it whatsoever.”
But within a week she was flattened. “I had just never felt ill in this way before. I felt like I had an elephant sitting on my chest.” At times, she became convinced she was going to die.
A single mother of three, Hastie “said what I thought might be my final words to the one child who happened to be walking past my bedroom door”. Although her condition is not quite as overwhelming one year on, she says, “I’ve never had a symptom-free day since.” (…)