‘Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye.’
Lewis Carroll
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, p. 13
Case: Iain’s story
At the end of January 2023 I burst into tears as I opened the front door of Perrin’s Corner and stepped outside. Dr Perrin had just declared it to be ‘D-Day’. I was finally discharged. What I hadn’t been consciously aware of until the tears gave me away, was that I had spent a long time uncertain that I would ever be well again.
I caught COVID-19 in April 2020. I had a bit of a sore throat and a headache. I hadn’t suffered any problems with taste, smell or breathing and felt that I had got off lightly. I was finding my daily duties of caring for my young adult daughter, who suffers with ME/CFS and fibromyalgia, increasingly difficult. I was spending more and more time either in bed or on the sofa. Another daughter couldn’t manage to go to work and joined me on the sofa where, on a good day, I got to experience her favourite Netflix shows. On a bad day, even watching TV was too much for me. I couldn’t cook, I could read very little, I couldn’t go out and see anyone or run errands, even conversation was difficult. I would be knocked out for a few hours if I spoke to my parents on the phone. Eventually, my wife connected the dots and had a conversation with the man treating our youngest for ME. A trip to see Dr Raymond Perrin revealed that I had post-COVID fatigue, as did my eldest and middle daughters.
You may remember that shopping involved queueing and going one way around the shop and scrambling for toilet rolls … and I could be of no help whatsoever. My wife, Michelle, as well as working full time, had to deal with these extended domestic chores, doing all of the cooking and cleaning and massaging three of us every day. She would get up, work online, get our breakfast, go back into her office, stop to get us drinks, lunch, do the shopping, get dinner and then massage us all.
After a few months of being treated with the Perrin Technique™ in the clinic and at home I saw some improvement and could manage a short daily walk around the block. However