Doncaster Olympic star bedbound for 22 hours a day with debiliating illness

A former Doncaster Olympic sprinter has revealed she is now bed bound 22 hours a day after being diagnosed with a debilitating illness.

Beth Dobbin, from Sprotbrrugh, who competeted for Team GB at the Tokyo Olympics, quit athletics earlier this year after revealing a “life changing health issue.”

In an interview with the BBC, the 32-year-old have revealed she has been diagnosed with ME - myalgic encephalomyelitis, a chronic, fluctuating disease, causing symptoms such as sleep problems, problems with thinking and memory, pain and severe, persistent fatigue that does not improve with rest.

She said: "I've done little things like attend a blood test at the doctors and been in bed for months after. So doing this interview, chatting away for 30 minutes, that could have an impact on me in 2027," she said

"But I felt like it was really important to do that to get the message out."

A conversation, or even something so simple as a light too bright or a sound too loud, can cause a "crash" that lasts 24, 48 hours, or in the worst cases, months on end.

She told the BBC that this year she has left the house on just five occasions and spends up to 22 hours a day in bed, only getting up to use the bathroom.

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"It's life-decimating like I can't even put into words," she said. "I feel like I've lost everything.

"I have still got my family, but I've lost my independence, my health, the ability to work, the ability to exercise."

It all started with back-to-back Covid and glandular fever infections in the winter of 2021-22. She had not been unwell with either, only discovering she had contracted both through retrospective tests.

She had been sleeping a bit more and her running times were slightly down, but nothing that raised alarm. As time went on, she noticed soreness in the glands of her neck and armpits and a general sense of not quite feeling herself.

British Athletics doctors ran tests that gave no answers, so she carried on, assuming it was lingering glandular fever that would eventually pass.

She said: "I think I saw four or five different specialists because the symptoms that I was having, they were across multiple [body] systems. All the specialists said 'this is ME' and we don't want it to be that because there's nothing out there for it."

ME has no known cure or specific treatment, with patients often relying on off-label medication to manage a condition that can cause more than 200 symptoms, including nausea, headaches, poor cognitive function and brain fog.

The condition is also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), a label Dobbin strongly rejects. As a former athlete who balanced working eight-hour shifts with training before turning professional, she says she has "known fatigue my whole life" and believes the term fails to capture the severity of the illness.

"I wish it was just fatigue, that would be a walk in the park," she says. "It's so much more than that. If I thought of fatigue in my top 20 symptoms it might just make the cut."

Instead, she says, it feels like her entire body "is shutting down; it feels like you are a few days from death".

Despite the length of time she spends in bed, Dobbin often feels too unwell to sleep and requires medication to help her do so.

"Even things like sitting up for a prolonged period of time can take it out of me so I prefer to be just propped up in bed, and that doesn't mean I feel fine. It doesn't get rid of my symptoms, but it makes them less hellish."

Asked about her future, Dobbin is straight to the point: "It's very bleak, unfortunately.

"The only positive thing really to say is that Covid happened six years ago now and it's like the whole medical community has woken up."

Since the Covid pandemic and the emergence of long Covid, for which there is a significant overlap in symptoms with ME, there has been a surge in attention and increase in research funding for the condition.

She added: "There will be something, I hope, in the future.

"I said I wanted to speak about it. It's not necessarily that I want to discuss it [but] it's raising that awareness. And unfortunately, athletes are believed a lot more than the average person.

"A lot of people that have this illness that I've spoken to have said to me 'I don't get believed, people think I'm lazy'. I've never experienced one person that doesn't believe me and that's because, why would an athlete just suddenly stop after 20 years?

"I've got a slight platform. If this happened to most people they wouldn't be able to speak about it, so I do feel like I've got a bit of a duty to do that."

Beth, who hails from Sprotbrough, ran at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, reaching the semi-finals, and won 4x400m relay bronze for Scotland at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

She also competed at three European Championships and two World Championships.

In 2018, she smashed a Scottish record that had stood for 34 years and was crowned British champion, while her best time of 22.50 seconds came at the 2019 Anniversary Games in London.

In 2019, she revealed how she had been diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 13.

She is the daughter of former Celtic, Grimsby Town, Barnsley and Doncaster Rovers footballer Jim Dobbin.