Katharine Cheston
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kacheston.bsky.social
Katharine Cheston
@kacheston.bsky.social
920 followers 250 following 57 posts
Researching “the greatest medical scandal of the 21st century”. Infection-Associated Chronic Illness, activism, stigma, medical humanities. Postdoctoral fellow in Sociology.
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kacheston.bsky.social
An incredibly moving post:

"I have spent the vast majority of my 20s in bed and alone in the darkness and silence"
Screenshot of an article: "We all have these big ideas about what our 20’s are supposed to look like, how they’re supposed to feel and who we’re supposed to be. I’ve watched through a screen while the majority of people I grew up with have spent their 20s living; been to university, travelled, started careers, fallen in love, had families, bought their own homes, experienced so much. I have spent the vast majority of my 20s in bed and alone in the darkness and silence Meanwhile, in my 20s I have had to have my most basic needs seen to by my Mum, my family, my friends, complete strangers. My Mum and I have spent hours upon hours on the phone to Receptionists, Doctors, Nurses, Social Workers and Carers, often begging for help. I have tried countless medications and experienced countless side effects and struggled to manage countless symptoms by myself. I have been unable to speak and unable to feed myself, unable to sit up and unable to stand, unable to cope with the presence of other people and unable to be safely left alone. I have spent the vast majority of my 20s in bed and alone in the darkness and silence, unable to access the outside world and all it has to offer."
October 10, 2025 at 6:06 PM
kacheston.bsky.social
My favourite bit of gardening* is when you get to eat the literal fruits of your own neglect and incompetence.

*Gardening as currently consists of negotiating the obstacle course around giant overgrown fig tree I have failed to work out how to prune for the second year running…
Plastic container full of figs
August 19, 2025 at 8:05 PM
kacheston.bsky.social
ALT TEXT - apologies, part of the alt text had been cut off in the original image/post. I've included it again, in two parts.
ALT TEXT PART ONE Beliefs about ME/CFS can shape lives Dear Editor, Last year, I completed a Wellcome-funded PhD exploring women’s experiences of ‘medically unexplained symptoms’ (MUS), a category into which ME/CFS is typically subsumed. During my PhD, I had the privilege of interviewing women living with illnesses including ME/CFS. My interest in ME/CFS is both professional and personal. In September 2008, around my fifteenth birthday, I caught a ‘flu-like virus. My health deteriorated sharply and I was diagnosed with ME/CFS in January 2009; my teenage years and early twenties were shaped by different kinds of formative experiences. In February 2016, I caught another ‘flu-like virus. To my intense and enduring surprise, my ME/CFS symptoms disappeared. They have not returned. While Dr Miller and colleagues argue that ‘[r]eframing beliefs about illness, along with specialist rehabilitation, can help recovery in people with severe ME/CFS’,[1] my recovery did not involve any of these factors. It simply happened. My health has changed drastically, but my beliefs about the illness and its causes have remained steadfast since 2008. In 2013, after four years unwell and a return to severe illness, I came to believe that I would not recover. This belief did not harm my mental wellbeing, contra to the claims of Dr Miller and colleagues.[1] What did harm my mental wellbeing - to such a significant extent that I have since needed professional support to move forwards - were the beliefs that others held about me and my illness: that I could get better, if only I reframed my own thoughts, or did more exercise, or exercised in a different way, or stopped focusing on my symptoms. In short, the belief that there was a ‘path’ to recovery (as Dr Miller and colleagues put it),[1] if only I chose to search for it. ALT TEXT PART TWO The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) no longer recommends therapies based on deconditioning and exercise avoidance theories as perpetuating ME/CFS,[2] recognising that these can cause people with ME/CFS to become more severely unwell[3,4,5,6]. Yet my qualitative data illuminates additional harms provoked by these approaches to, and beliefs about, ME/CFS.[7] If the biopsychosocial approach helps someone with ME/CFS to recover (and, with no diagnostic test for ME/CFS, this is arguably a heterogenous patient population) this is undoubtedly a source of both empowerment and comfort, protecting this individual from understandable fears of symptom recurrence. However, there is no limit to how many beliefs you can reframe and to how many unhelpful behaviours you can challenge. I found that this exclusive focus on a patient’s beliefs and behaviours can cause those who remain (or become more) ill to spiral into self-doubt and self-blame, with damaging and corrosive impacts[7]. The enduring belief that ME/CFS is, as one clinician-researcher claimed in 1997, a ‘real but reversible condition that the patient may influence by practical self-help’[8] places an additional burden of suffering of those who remain ill by framing persistent symptoms as personal failure. I speak from both personal and professional experience when I say that the pain this provokes can shape lives. Finally, Dr Miller and colleagues call for a ‘[c]onstructive dialogue between recovered and symptomatic patients’ to ‘help identify practical approaches to recovery’.[1] I see no use in such a dialogue: I do not know why I became ill; I do not know why I recovered. But I do have something to say to symptomatic patients: This is not your fault. Dr Katharine Cheston Mildred Blaxter Postdoctoral Fellow Department of Sociology and Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University katharine.cheston@durham.ac.uk
May 16, 2025 at 8:52 AM
kacheston.bsky.social
I've submitted a rapid response to this BMJ Opinion piece - speaking from my dual experience as both researcher and 'recovered ME/CFS patient' (not a term I'd choose to employ).
Beliefs about ME/CFS can shape lives Dear Editor, Last year, I completed a Wellcome-funded PhD exploring women’s experiences of ‘medically unexplained symptoms’ (MUS), a category into which ME/CFS is typically subsumed. During my PhD, I had the privilege of interviewing women living with illnesses including ME/CFS. My interest in ME/CFS is both professional and personal. In September 2008, around my fifteenth birthday, I caught a ‘flu-like virus. My health deteriorated sharply and I was diagnosed with ME/CFS in January 2009; my teenage years and early twenties were shaped by different kinds of formative experiences. In February 2016, I caught another ‘flu-like virus. To my intense and enduring surprise, my ME/CFS symptoms disappeared. They have not returned. While Dr Miller and colleagues argue that ‘[r]eframing beliefs about illness, along with specialist rehabilitation, can help recovery in people with severe ME/CFS’,[1] my recovery did not involve any of these factors. It simply happened. My health has changed drastically, but my beliefs about the illness and its causes have remained steadfast since 2008. In 2013, after four years unwell and a return to severe illness, I came to believe that I would not recover. This belief did not harm my mental wellbeing, contra to the claims of Dr Miller and colleagues.[1] What did harm my mental wellbeing - to such a significant extent that I have since needed professional support to move forwards - were the beliefs that others held about me and my illness: that I could get better, if only I reframed my own thoughts, or did more exercise, or exercised in a different way, or stopped focusing on my symptoms. In short, the belief that there was a ‘path’ to recovery (as Dr Miller and colleagues put it),[1] if only I chose to search for it. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) no longer recommends therapies based on deconditioning and exercise avoidance theories as perpetuating ME/CFS,[2] recognisin… References 1. Miller, A; Symington, F; Garner, P; Pedersen, M. Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care. BMJ 2025;389:r977. doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r977 2. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Myalgic encephalomyelitis (or encephalopathy)/chronic fatigue syndrome: diagnosis and management. 29 Oct 2021. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng206 3. Geraghty, K; Hann, M; Kurtev, S. Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome patients’ reports of symptom changes following cognitive behavioural therapy, graded exercise therapy and pacing treatments: Analysis of a primary survey compared with secondary surveys. J Health Psychol 2019;24:1318-1333. doi:10.1177/1359105317726152 4. Vink, M; Vink-Niese, A. Graded exercise therapy for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome is not effective and unsafe. Re-analysis of a Cochrane review. Health Psychol Open 2018;5:2055102918805187. doi:10.1177/2055102918805187 5. Kindlon, T. Do graded activity therapies cause harm in chronic fatigue syndrome? J Health Psychol 2017;22:1146-1154. doi:10.1177/1359105317697323 6. Geraghty, K; Esmail, A. Chronic fatigue syndrome: Is the biopsychosocial model responsible for patient dissatisfaction and harm? Br J Gen Pract 2016;66:437-438. doi:10.3399/bjgp16X686473 7. Cheston, K. (Dis)respect and shame in the context of ‘medically unexplained’ illness. J Eval Clin Pract 2022;28:909–916. doi:10.1111/jep.13740 8. Sharpe, M. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Functional Somatic Complaints: The Example ofChronic Fatigue Syndrome. Psychosomatics 1997;38:356-362. doi.org/10.1016/S0033-3182(97)71443-9
May 15, 2025 at 4:45 PM
kacheston.bsky.social
Their reference to 'the explanatory power of recent symptom science' is surely undermined by excerpts from the transcripts from these consultations (as reported here pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...)

A 'kind of processor' in the brain, 'the fight or flight thing' - this hardly seems scientific!
Doctor: And what we think happens in patients like that and it’s really common for it to happen is that the problem isn’t in the tissues, the problem is in the processing in the spine and also you’ve got a kind of processor here [yeah] in the brain [ok] below the sub, below the conscious it isn’t something you’re thinking [yeah] this is something that’s happening to the nerves [yeah] and there’s one theory that it’s kind of, this little, these processors get kind of overloaded and this often happens after people have had an operation or injury (GP in Consultation 2 with G01042) Doctor: The other things that we can do is because this is all set up on the fight or flight thing, you know there’s danger, we need to be alert all the time [yeah yeah], something that we can do is try and break that cycle by convincing the brain that actually you’re more relaxed, see what I mean? So and that would be…either using relaxation techniques or breathing techniques (GPxx in 2nd consultation with S20002)
April 11, 2025 at 11:43 AM
kacheston.bsky.social
'Hope you get better soon'
A child's letter, which reads: 'To Paddington I'm sorry this happened to you, Hope you get better soon.'
March 4, 2025 at 2:35 PM
kacheston.bsky.social
One of the letters appears to feature vague anti-Trump themes:
A handwritten letter, which reads: 'Dear Paddington, Please come back to Newbury. This town needs you. You suffered loss and hardship on your journey to the UK but are unfailingly polite and kind to everyone. Certain world leaders could learn a lot from you.'
March 4, 2025 at 2:34 PM
kacheston.bsky.social
Meanwhile, the bench is currently a shrine - and features, as of this morning, seven jars of marmalade, four sandwiches, and two letters.
A bench, upon which is placed seven jars of marmalade (from assorted brands and shops), four sandwiches and two letters. The letters have some of the jars of marmalade placed on top of them, presumably so that they don't blow away. One of the letters looks like it has been laminated.
March 4, 2025 at 2:32 PM
kacheston.bsky.social
Two arrests were made; bear was recovered and headed ‘to Newbury police station for a much-needed marmalade sandwich’.
Facebook post from Thames Valley Police West Berkshire. Text reads: 'We are delighted to share that we have recovered the stolen Newbury Paddington Bear statue and made two arrests. Anyone with information about the theft and criminal damage in Northbrook Street at around 2am today should [emoji of a telephone] 101 or make a report on our website, quoting 43250102626. Thank you to everyone who has supported our investigation so far and shared their memories of the Paddington statue with us. We will support its restoration as best we can. For the meantime, Paddington is heading to Newbury police station for a much-needed marmalade sandwich [emoji of a sandwich]'
March 4, 2025 at 2:30 PM
kacheston.bsky.social
There was a brief psychic interlude (paging @arielswyer.bsky.social).

'Spooky.'
Screenshot of a Facebook post. The text reads: 'My wife is psychic - some of the things she comes up with BEFORE they happen is frightening. Yesterday, we visited Newbury and she remarked that it was amazing Paddington was still there, we last visited a month ago. Then this. Spooky. (and no, we didn't drive back from 20 miles away to take him!)'
March 4, 2025 at 2:28 PM
kacheston.bsky.social
The 'Paddington murder’ emphasised deep-seated local rivalries:
Facebook post with a picture of the vandalised Paddington statue and the text: 'Where is the CCTV footage of the paddington murder we all want to see the disgusting little rat who took it from all of the locals' Google image of a headline in the Basingstoke Gazette: 'Alleged Paddington Bear vandals not from Basingstoke, police confirm'
March 4, 2025 at 2:23 PM
kacheston.bsky.social
Marmalade tributes grew exponentially:
One jar of marmalade on the pavement, in front of a pink gazebo. Two jars of marmalade on the pavement, in front of a pink gazebo.
March 4, 2025 at 2:20 PM
kacheston.bsky.social
The crime was discovered at 8am. By 10am, a garish pink ‘Visit Newbury’ gazebo had been placed over the crime scene, and by 12pm: ‘He’s in a body bag!’
Facebook post including image of Paddington bear statue on a bench, with the front half removed. Pink gazebo on a town street Back of the pink gazebo, with a black bag placed over a statue sitting on a bench.
March 4, 2025 at 2:19 PM
kacheston.bsky.social
It was a privilege to present, with my dad, to the Psychological Sciences Research Group at UWE.

The presentation was a personal reflection on our family's experience of ME and the harm that dogmatic beliefs about the condition can cause.

uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/13780...
30-year old grainy colour photo. Man with brown hair dressed in jeans and polo shirt holds his young daughter's hand as they walk towards the camera. Little girl is about 18 months old and wears a flowery knitted jumper. They are in a garden; it is sunny and there are red flowers behind them.
February 28, 2025 at 11:27 AM
kacheston.bsky.social
Hello Bsky #MedHums folk!

A quick question: does anyone know of any work on 'narratives about illness'?

Hydén (1997) described three types of illness narratives: illness as narrative, narrative about illness, and narrative as illness.
September 30, 2024 at 6:34 PM
kacheston.bsky.social
This looks really interesting! I've just noticed that the form is not accepting new responses - do you know if this is correct?
September 11, 2024 at 10:24 AM