Miranda Hart has confessed that she ‘couldn’t get out of bed’ at the height of her three-decade battle with Lyme disease.
The actress, 51, previously shared that she had struggled with a mystery health condition for three decades which forced her to take a lengthy break from the spotlight, before she finally received an official diagnosis.
It took medics 33 years to discover Miranda had been battling with the bacterial infection Lyme Disease, after initially mislabelling her as being agoraphobic – an anxiety disorder characterised by symptoms of anxiety in situations.
In an extract from her book I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You, which she shared in her monthly newsletter, Miranda offered an insight into the height of her health struggles while doctors failed to find the cause of her symptoms.
The comedian, who also shared in her book she had married surveyor Richard Fairs, admitted that she felt increasingly ‘alone’ as it no one seemed to understand the height of her struggles.
Miranda wrote: ‘As I continued to study the scientists on this matter, another phrase stood out. They would say, “There’s nothing wrong here right now.” What?!
Miranda Hart, 51, has confessed that she ‘couldn’t get out of bed’ at the height of her three-decade battle with Lyme disease
‘Oh, it seemed not only implausible, but downright mean. Frankly, I would have punched someone in the face had they coolly said this to me when I was collapsed with exhaustion. I would have shouted, um, excuse me, but EVERYTHING is wrong.
‘I can’t get out of bed. I’m alone. No one understands. My dreams and hopes for my life are fading away. Nothing is right, right now. It’s wrong. And that’s why it’s also blooming awful. I’m all full of wrong, so, and I mean this with no disrespect at all, go away, thank you to you!’
She went onto add: ‘I’m welling up thinking of the myriad stories of people hit with ghastly events, but who heroically keep taking the next breath. Please applaud yourself, and whatever you feel like a warrior about right now.
‘The scientists even suggest it’s possible to get to, to get to “okay, this is what is meant to be happening in this moment, so I can accept it and live it”.
‘I mean, that’s ninja level supernatural calmery, and I’m still amazed when I get anywhere near close to it. All I know for sure is that through acceptance, a lot of suffering can be eased.
‘Or rather, suffering about the suffering. I knew that physical and emotional pain, darkness of all kinds, was an uncontrollable part of life.
‘And now came the notion that much of that pain is actually caused by the resistance to pain. Focusing on pain, fear of the pain, judging the pain.
‘They were not telling me to deny my situation and illness, but instead saying that if I confronted it compassionately, instead of furiously wanting it to go away, perhaps I could bend towards finding a way to accept it. The alternative wasn’t working.
The actress, 51, previously shared that she had struggled with a mystery health condition for three decades which forced her to take a lengthy break from the spotlight
‘Every time I wished my symptoms to be different, every time I protested being bed or housebound, I was only adding fuel to an already stressful situation.
‘I was frightening myself, like I was constantly watching a bad newsreel. OK, I concede. The theory makes sense.’
Miranda, who announced last year that she had recently married, teased a return to her comedy career in October, admitting she has missed ‘laughter and silliness’.
The star also explained how her chronic illness has left her housebound for years, putting a hiatus on her incredible career.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Young Again with Kirsty Young, Miranda explained how ‘the hardest thing’ of her health issues was not being able to work.
She said: ‘You know that the hardest thing I found was letting go of work and the pain of not being able to work.
‘So, no, I couldn’t work because I became ill and I tried to keep going before the diagnosis and it didn’t go well, and, I feel like I want to say thank you to all those dear producers and directors that had to work with me when we didn’t know what was going on and I was so unwell, but I hated having to stop work.’
She continued: ‘I hated giving up work… The phone completely stopped ringing and no one texted me, nothing, absolutely nothing. Just a few very kindly people who’d occasionally touch in and go, “Just come back when you’re ready”.’
However, Miranda explained that her mystery husband had helped her heal following her years of ‘deep deep aloneness’ and gushed he was a ‘brilliant best friend of a man’.
She said: ‘I’ve been married twice on screen, but third time in real life. It’s very, very lovely. I mean, I pinch myself every day.
‘That longing I felt and that deep deep aloneness – I think if I hadn’t longed, if I hadn’t felt what I felt, then I wouldn’t have found him and I wouldn’t be here.
‘It led me to grieve for what I needed and to become the person I needed to be to connect, and so I now have this brilliant best friend of a man and we laugh every day.
‘He’s practically more ridiculous than I, which I never thought possible to find in a human being. He’s been part of healing. He’s helped me find my joy and meaning. It’s just wonderful. And he says the same for me, I should rather proudly add. It’s lovely.’
Describing their first date, Miranda recalled how the pair had bonded over pizza and fallen for each other.
She said: ‘I was determined on going on a date. [I thought] right, if I’m learning about how to be honest about who I am and love myself, then when a pizza delivery comes and it’s all, you know, shunted towards one end in the delivery.
‘It’s very upsetting… I thought, well no, I’m going to practice what I’m preaching and learning, so I just launched into this: “I’m really pissed off. Look at the pizza. Now it looks like a calzone, I hate calzones! They’re just pizzas folded. What is a calzone? This is really upsetting”.
‘And then you could see his sort of wide eyes and I thought, in the past I would have gone, “I’m so sorry, I’m an absolute idiot. Don’t look at me, I’m so silly ha ha.”
‘But I carried on about the pizza but it led to a very true and funny connection and brilliant date.’
In her new memoir, released earlier this month, Miranda talks about her plight and the moment she ‘collapsed’ from ill health, leading to her taking a near decade break out of the spotlight.
While fans know the comedian as Chummy in Call The Midwife and for her cheery self-titled sitcom, she admitted behind closed doors she was desperately telling doctors: ‘I feel toxic and poisoned.’
It took medics 33 years to discover Miranda had been battling with the bacterial infection Lyme disease, after initially mislabelling her as being agoraphobic – an anxiety disorder characterised by symptoms of anxiety in situations.
She recalls running out a doctor’s appointment in floods of tears after they told her she was ‘TATT’ – ‘Tired All The Time’ and said: ‘I just don’t know what to do with you.’
The comic finally received the diagnosis in lockdown and believes she contracted Lyme disease when she 14 after battling nasty flu-like symptoms in Virginia.
She wrote: ‘For me it was the unnerving neurological symptoms that I had got initially, aged fourteen, from Lyme, which I always found particularly hard to deal with. And they got considerably worse as I headed into my forties. As did the fatigue from the cell depletion. Yup, all delightful.’
Of the moment she got her diagnosis, she added: ‘I got off that Zoom call, pulled my laptop shut and sat there, still and aghast. So many emotions, I was shocked, but I also immediately felt a deep well of sadness and disappointment – for over three decades I’d KNOWN there was something wrong.
‘I recalled all the times I’d told different doctors, “I feel toxic and poisoned, or, It’s like I have flu every day but I don’t have a temperature.”
‘(It’s amazing how the body can sometimes literally tell us what’s going on.) I felt anger rising at the times l’d been told I must have agoraphobia.
In an extract from her book I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You, Miranda offered insight into the height of her health struggles while doctors failed to find the cause of her symptoms
‘I would try and treat it as such, when, as it turned out, it was the lack of energy and the extreme light and sound sensitivity that made my body crash when going out to be in any kind of activity or stimulating environment.’
Miranda says she struggled to know how to share the news of her diagnosis with her followers, fearing she would be perceived as ‘complaining’ or ‘just tired all the time’.
But Lyme disease was causing havoc for her body and she ended up with ‘endless diagnoses’ and also, fans soon noticed her absence from TV screens.
She also spoke about her husband for the first time, confessing that she and the building surveyor ‘briefly’ split before realising the depth of their feelings for one another.
In her book, Miranda recalled that she was ‘spending more and more time’ with ‘The Boy From Bristol,’ as she calls him, and ‘feelings were deepening. And then. We had to take a break.’
‘There were a few reasons why, we didn’t know whether the timing was right to become an ‘us.’ It was hard. It hurt my heart. A lot. I didn’t know whether it was the end or whether circumstances might eventually mean we could continue getting to know each other.’
