This summer was a season of great change for our family. After little more than a year in our flat, my dad had found us a lovely big house with a garden and we were packing again. Moving house can be quite stressful for the healthiest of people, so it can really be a nightmare for somebody with a severe chronic illness like ME.

We actually loved our flat, it was enough for my sister and I, it ticked most of the boxes when we were house hunting a year ago, but there wasn't room for the parents when they came over, and it was starting to get crowded.

It's Invisible Illness Awareness Week and this will be the first time I am participating in an online awareness campaign of this kind. Today marks the end of six months since I got the viral infection that changed my life. That gloriously sunny day in Italy on the first of April. It all happened so quickly and unexpectedly, I was out cycling in the countryside one minute and in bed the next. My body reached a point of weakness and exhaustion that I'd never known before and nothing has been the same since.