Celebrity Traitors star Miranda Hart spent years battling a severe and debilitating form of Lyme disease that left her largely bed bound with severe and extreme fatigue. The actress and comedian, who appears in the new series of Celebrity Traitors on BBC One, was not diagnosed until 2020 when she was told she had ME caused by Lyme disease, a tick-borne infection passed on from the bite of an infected tick.
Years without answers
Despite going back and forth to doctors, Hart was not diagnosed until 2020. Speaking previously to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, she revealed she eventually collapsed, ending up bedbound as her fatigue became so severe she admitted she didn't know how to pick up a glass of water.
In a bid to help others, Hart wrote her own book, I Haven't Been Entirely Honest With You, outlining her health battles and challenges for the 10 years prior. In the book, she also delves into how difficult it is living with an invisible condition that she dubs "misunderstood" as well as living a "half life" with no answers.
Speaking out on her condition
Speaking on the Graham Norton Show, Hart previously opened up on her condition that left her fearing for her life. She said: "The book starts with me collapsed on my sitting room floor with fatigue basically and not really knowing what was going on."
"For years and years I've been passed from doctor to doctor with me saying I'm so fatigued, I've got all this pain I didn't know what's going on and no-one could give me any answers, which sadly is a familiar story for many. So I just didn't know what to do, I didn't have any answers."
She then says how doctors told her she had "anxiety and agoraphobia" which "didn't ring true at the time" as Hart continued: "I finally got a diagnosis only really relatively recently of ME caused by Lyme disease so my whole life story was rewritten - I knew there was something wrong."
Hart said that doctors eventually realised she must have developed the tick-borne illness from around the age of 14 or 15 when she lived in America, as she said: "I had it in my system for years."
The Celebrity Traitors continues on BBC One and iPlayer tonight at 8pm.
