MY CANINE CARER CAN EVEN TELL WHEN I’M ABOUT TO FAINT

After years of ill health nearly destroyed her, Libbi Mattick rediscovered her freedom thanks to her assistance dog Sparrow. She tells Kate Thompson about the amazing four-legged saviour who fetches help, brings her medicine – and does the laundry

ibbi Mattick is in her bedroom hanging up clothes. Her golden retriever Sparrow is curled up asleep on the floor nearby. As Libbi reaches up into the cupboard, she feels the familiar surge of light-headedness and nausea. Panic clogs her throat as shapes shift in her peripheral vision and the floor rushes up to meet her. She wants to scream for help, but her heart feels like it’s exploding. Instead, she wrenches a black silicone band from her wrist. ‘Go,’ she whispers. In the distance, she hears her partner Irving’s voice. ‘Show me, where is she?’

Sparrow arrived in Libbi’s home in Surrey on Christmas Eve 2018. After a gruelling 13-year battle with ME, Libbi was virtually housebound; unable to venture out alone for fear of being overwhelmed by the exhaustion, headaches, panic attacks, fainting episodes and seizures which dominated her life. ‘Aged 15, I came down with a virus called labyrinthitis and never recovered,’ explains Libbi. ‘My life imploded. I went from being a fun-loving, healthy girl, who adored ballet, to someone who needed help walking up the stairs,’ says Libbi, now 29.

Over the next two years Libbi’s body was overwhelmed by ME and a resulting eating disorder, and she marked her 18th birthday on a hospital ward. ‘My weight had dropped by half and I began having seizures, which were diagnosed as epilepsy. It was terrifying. My education suffered as I couldn’t manage full days at school, I had to give up dancing and most of my friends drifted away. It was as if my body had turned against me. I was still a teenager but I felt like a 90-year-old.’

The physical trauma had a knock-on effect on Libbi’s mental health. ‘I struggled with depression, anxiety and panic attacks. I also developed an obsessive-compulsive disorder.’ As her peers went off to university, Libbi could barely summon up the energy to wash her own hair. To add to her pain, at that time, many in the medical profession still believed that ME was a psychological condition, with sufferers frequently made to feel as though