From Salsa Dancing to Swine Flu
- Aug 27, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
There was a time when I never gave my health a second thought. This was about to change after I developed Swine Flu in 2009.
Life Had Become Busy, Fun, and Full of Energy
I was a single Mum to an 11-year-old child with an inherited, chronic disease. While he was well enough to be in school, I volunteered at the local office of a national charity. I had a busy and active life of charity fundraising, swimming, Salsa dancing and exercise classes.
This was a stark contrast to my life three years earlier as a stay-at-home Mum, with no friends and an unhappy marriage. My life was now full, busy, and fun. Volunteering was my route back into work. My son’s health was stabilising, and I was building skills and experience for future employment.
In November 2009, I attended a Salsa party to promote my next charity event. I felt really tired that night, so I didn’t dance as much as usual and left early. It had been a hectic week, including a few days of travelling into Birmingham for training connected to my volunteer role. I was burning the candle at both ends, always busy, always on the go, or beavering away on my laptop. I told myself I just needed some sleep and then I’d be fine. With hindsight, I can see I was ignoring all the warning signs, convinced nothing could slow me down.
People around me constantly warned me to slow down. “You’ll make yourself ill,” they said. I thought that if it happened, I’d just stop, rest, recover, and carry on. I couldn’t have been more wrong!
Swine Flu Hits and Changes Everything
The next morning, it was clear I was ill. Flu-like symptoms hit me hard. I had a suspicion about what it was, and my doctor later confirmed it: I had Swine Flu. It was terrifying to feel so helpless, especially as my son was extremely vulnerable to viruses.
I was quarantined at home, with a course of antiviral medication delivered for both of us as a precaution. Thankfully, he didn’t catch it from me. I’d never been so ill, not even when I caught Norovirus the year before. And this dragged on for far longer.
The weeks at home were frustrating. Sleep and TV filled most of my days because I could do very little else beyond keeping us both fed and watered. Living so far from family made it even harder. At the time, I had no idea just how much my life was about to change.
Fatigue, Vertigo, and Setbacks
Once my quarantine ended and the UTI I’d developed alongside the Swine Flu was cleared up with antibiotics, I tried to return to my usual activities. But I struggled. Energy was scarce, everything felt harder. I thought I’d lost fitness from weeks of rest, so I pushed harder with exercise classes and swimming. But I couldn’t keep it up. All the time I was wondering: what is wrong with me? Was I just lazy? Or was something more serious happening?
There would be a few weeks of near-normality, then the fatigue and achiness struck again, accompanied by brain fog, vertigo and nausea. I felt like a failure for not being able to do everything I used to. Gradually, I dropped some activities, focusing on what remained: my son and the volunteer work I loved. But I was still going round in circles, trying the same things over and over, wondering why they weren’t working. It’s hard to stop and take stock when you’re just trying to get through each day.
After about ten months, I felt I had almost recovered. I just needed to get my fitness levels back to where they were. Ten months recovery just from having the flu? I didn’t yet understand that my body had changed in ways I couldn’t see. I kept pushing, failing to keep up with everything, picking up every virus going, along with bouts of labyrinthitis and vertigo. Days off sick were followed by rushed returns to work. Rinse and repeat.
My participation in the Salsa world came to an end. Fitness classes were dropped one by one, swimming was put on hold, and seeing friends became too much. I told myself it was to make time for my new romantic relationship. But the truth was, I didn’t have the energy for it all. I did, however, manage to finish my training in Birmingham.
I loved my voluntary job, and my responsibilities grew. I took on their social media account, launched a national awareness campaign for the charity, gave a seminar, and went on to receive an award at their national conference. There was even talk of funding my role as a paid position. It felt like a dream come true!
The Turning Point at Exeter Conference
It was during this conference, in September 2012, that I first realised something was seriously wrong. The conference was held at Exeter University, which has a hillside campus. I struggled to keep up with a colleague who used a walking stick due to mobility issues. I kept muttering about needing to regain my fitness, while secretly worrying about what was happening to me. If someone with mobility issues could manage better than me, what was happening to my body?
On the final day I gave my seminar (which I’d only had a couple of days to prepare for). I was very nervous, and it was better attended than had been anticipated. When the room fell silent, and it was time for me to start talking, I froze. I was so nervous and stressed that my vision had blurred and I couldn’t see my notes. Then I felt a zap in my brain, like an elastic band stretched too far and snapping. In that moment I knew that I was far too stressed, and far too exhausted for my body to cope with. But I took a deep breath, mumbled something about my nerves, which immediately brought the audience on side, and somehow got through my presentation and the following Q&A session. Amazingly, it was a great success! I was proud, of course I was. But I finally realised something was really not right with me! What was my body trying to tell me?
An evening of dinner, socialising and an awards ceremony was looming. But I just wanted to get a chocolate bar from a vending machine and crawl into bed. However, I had been tipped off about the award, so I got dressed for the lengthy dinner and ceremony. It all went in a blur. Excitement swirled around me as I returned from the stage with my media award, yet all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep.
The next day, I went straight from the conference to meet my boyfriend for a romantic weekend away, celebrating our first anniversary. I spent more time in bed than anticipated, and not in a fun way! A horrific attack of vertigo and what felt like extremely low blood sugar hit me while we were in a gift shop. The car was just outside, and my partner drove me around looking for food. I felt close to passing out or collapsing, so I waited in the car as he dashed into a shop for a Mars bar. Was this just fatigue, or something serious? I had never felt so ill and helpless. Chocolate helped, a little, and I promised myself I would see a doctor as soon as we returned home.
I felt a growing sense of fear about what the doctor might find.
Read the next post: From Swine Flu to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, where I share how I finally received my diagnosis.
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