Miranda Hart, a contestant on the new series of Celebrity Traitors, has spoken openly about her diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease and ME, a debilitating condition that left her bedbound for years. The comedian, known for Call the Midwife, is playing the game as a Faithful after not being selected as a Traitor.
Years Without Answers
Hart endured years struggling with a serious and incapacitating form of Lyme disease that rendered her predominantly bedridden with acute and overwhelming exhaustion. Despite repeated visits to medical professionals, she was not diagnosed until 2020, when she was informed she had ME triggered by Lyme disease.
Lyme disease is a tick-borne infection transmitted through the bite of an infected tick, but for Hart, symptoms did not show until later. Speaking previously on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, she disclosed she ultimately collapsed, becoming bedbound as her exhaustion grew so debilitating she confessed she did not know how to pick up a glass of water.
Book and Public Revelations
In an effort to support others facing similar struggles, Hart penned her own book, I Haven't Been Entirely Honest With You, detailing her health struggles and difficulties over the preceding decade. Within its pages, she also explores the challenges of living with an invisible condition she describes as "misunderstood" alongside enduring a "half life" without any clear diagnosis.
During an appearance on the Graham Norton Show, Hart previously spoke candidly about her condition, which 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."
She added: "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."
Diagnosis and Aftermath
Hart revealed how medical professionals told her she had "anxiety and agoraphobia," which "didn't ring true at the time." She 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."
Medical professionals ultimately concluded she must have contracted the tick-borne illness at around the age of 14 or 15 while living in America, adding: "I had it in my system for years."
