- By Nathalie Edell and Leanne Rinne
- BBC News
A woman who lives with chronic fatigue syndrome has told the BBC she has visited “virtually every country in the world” in the last 20 years.
Sue Rogers, who has just recently retuned from Afghanistan, has just sold her house ahead of her next trip.
Ms Rogers, who is 69 and from Brighton, said she has always been determined her condition would not hold her back.
“I think I have the curiosity gene. I always wanted to travel and I always loved seeing new new things,” she said.
Image source, Nawruz Qaderi
Her diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome came in her early 50s, It affects her muscles and can make her extremely tired.
But she said she was determined it would not stop her from travelling.
“I think I have visited virtually every country in the world in the last 20 years,” she said.
Some trips, however, had proved more challenging than others – including one to Kathmandu, when she had her appendix removed.
“I’ve fallen off a waterfall,” she added, “and they thought I had broken my ankle but it turned out I had done all the ligaments instead, so I spent the rest of that trip in South America in a boot.”
On another trip, to Mali, she said the car she was travelling in broke down on an isolated road.
She explained: “My guide suddenly got very stressed and said ‘hide, hide’.
“They couldn’t repair the car so they sent the army to get me and all these guys turned up with AK47s.
“Later on, I was told people had been kidnapped there before. That was a bit scary.”
