Hermione Hoby’s account of chronic illness is a first-person story, not a clinical guide. The Guardian published her essay on February 24, 2026, and released it as an Audio Long Read on April 6. Hoby wrote the piece, Alby Baldwin read the audio edition, Nicola Alexandrou produced it and Danielle Stephens served as executive producer. The story follows Hoby from an illness that began in childhood through diagnosis, repeated relapses and an uncertain experiment with brain retraining.
Hoby does not claim to have found a cure. She describes periods of better health alongside episodes that left her struggling to read, watch television, speak or walk from her bed to the bathroom. Her central question is whether brain retraining changed the course of her illness or merely coincided with one of the recoveries she had experienced before.
From a Childhood Virus to an ME/CFS Diagnosis
Hoby writes that she became ill at 11 after what first appeared to be an ordinary virus. The symptoms included headaches, a sore throat, swollen lymph nodes, pain, weakness and faintness when sitting or standing. A letter from her secondary school referred to a “mystery illness,” a phrase that stayed with her because no clear explanation followed. She recalls years in which tests appeared normal even when she felt unable to function normally.
In her early 30s, Hoby’s then partner suggested myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Her older brother Matthew had received the same diagnosis as a child, but Hoby initially questioned whether the label truly belonged to her. A specialist in New York later confirmed the ME/CFS diagnosis. She describes leaving that appointment in tears of relief after roughly two decades of uncertainty, even though the diagnosis did not bring a standard treatment.
“On my worst days I’ve felt in the grip of something almost demonic.”
Hoby says her health improved after she moved to Colorado in 2018, but severe episodes returned. One relapse began in October 2023 and lasted about eight weeks. Another followed in spring 2024. During that period, an energy healer recommended brain retraining, an idea Hoby initially resisted because it sounded too close to the suggestion that her physical suffering existed only in her mind.
Brain Retraining Brought Hope, Then Uncertainty
Hoby contacted Jason McTiernan, an engineer by training who became her wellness coach. She describes paying for a program built around the proposed connection between the brain, the autonomic nervous system and physical symptoms. Her exercises included relaxation, visualization, repeated affirmations, an aspirational vision board and notes recording small daily achievements. Hoby also makes clear that she found little empirical research and chose to place hope in anecdotal recovery stories.
At first, the effort appeared to work. On May 13, 2024, Hoby reached the top of a trail she had repeatedly imagined climbing. She began running farther, writing more easily and speaking about ME/CFS in the past tense. That confidence did not last. A later episode again left her largely confined to bed, and repeating the exercises did not produce the same result. When she later interviewed McTiernan as a journalist, she was still trying to understand why the method had seemed effective once and failed another time.
Her conclusion is deliberately unresolved. Hoby rejects both a triumphant cure narrative and a blanket declaration that brain retraining is fraudulent. She is uneasy with wellness claims that place responsibility for recovery entirely on an ill person, but she also does not dismiss every part of her experience. By the end of the essay, a new specialist has recommended further tests without promising a cure.
The Audio Long Read preserves that uncertainty rather than converting it into medical advice. Hoby expects that she will hike again and also that future relapses may return her to bed. The lesson she draws is limited and personal: the illness has not yielded a grand explanation, and living with it requires continuing management and mitigation. The podcast presents that account in Hoby’s words, read by Baldwin, without turning one patient’s experience into a universal treatment claim.