"NHS refusal to treat my condition"

For the past 5 years the NHS has refused to treat, or even acknowledge, the long term condition that has brought my life to stand still. I have spent hundreds, maybe even thousands, on private health care to try and get the help that I need, for the illness that my doctors wont acknowledge. Yes, you've guessed it, I suffer from Myalgic Encephalopathy or ME as it is more commonly known.

I have tried to get my GP to treat me, but he will no longer see me to treat me. There is nowhere else for me to turn, except the excellent private care that I cannot, as a pensioner, afford.

I have not been out of the house for 4 years. I am alone and now a widower. I am not depressed, though there are times when the lack of care from NHS 'professionals' causes bouts of depressed feeling and deep frustration - though I do not enter down the road of pills.

I face another summer, where I shall not see the sun in Cornwall or the South of France. No, I will be in my bedroom. I cannot tell you the frustration.

I am an ex military nurse, with 40 years experience in the field. I understand the difficulties for the medical community. You cannot see this disease to treat it. You cannot see, hear, feel or test for it. What are they to do?

All we ask, as ME sufferers, is for routine blood tests, to determine what we could be short of - or what could be wrong. As it stands I have spent a small fortune on these in the private medical sector. Where is the NHS?