Ruth, 54, from Manchester, suffers from chronic ill health. Here she shares her early experience with education, the restrictions ill health has had on her and how, with the help of FutureLearn, she has broken boundaries and surprised herself along the way.
“As a young person, I think I was reasonably intelligent. I passed my 11 plus (Yes I'm THAT old!!) and went on to the local state grammar school where I got 8 'O' levels and 4 'A' levels. I went on to study Nursing and then Midwifery. I always kept my brain active by reading, doing cryptic crosswords, watching TV shows on history, Archaeology, Art, Literature etc... I was never interested in sciences and hated maths with a vengeance!
I was leading a normal life until 14 years ago when I developed Fibromyalgia (A chronic pain condition which leaves me with pain, 24/7 requiring high doses of Morphine, fatigue and brain fog) and M.E (Myalgic Encephalopathy causing extreme fatigue and brain fog apart from many other things), So a double whammy. Over the next several years my physical life slowly eroded until I lived a very narrow life indeed. Today I am fairly housebound, not being able to drive anymore and needing to be pushed in a wheelchair out of the house, plus not having the energy to go out much anyway. The brain fog is awful. I struggle to concentrate, understand what's written and said, express myself and remember things. It's a bit like having Alzheimer's and isn't helped by the many medications I take. I had for some time been thinking about trying an Open University Degree or some form of study, but as I can't recall, retain or regurgitate any information and as I can't concentrate for long I decided it was a non-starter.
Like I say sciences never interested me, then at the end of 2015 Tim Peake went up in the ISS into space and suddenly my interest was peaked (Pun intended!). I started reading about Cosmology and then became interested in Astronomy and bought some binoculars to look at the night sky. I started trying to educate myself about it all. I was, and still am, really excited by it all. I joined a few Facebook Astronomy pages and on one of these, someone posted about the Future Learn Orion course. I went and had a look at the web page and thought I'd give it a try as it was free. I didn't think for one minute my foggy brain would cope. But I loved it! I then went on to look at other courses, Moons and other history and dietary courses.
I love doing the FutureLearn courses. Some days I really struggle to get anything into my brain. I seriously could not recall what I've just read. I couldn't explain it back to you if you asked what I'd learnt, BUT I really feel as though my brain power is improving slowly. I'm also learning, meeting new people online and I'm not just sat at home stagnating.”