My books are packed with melodrama, my life not so much. I have a habit of walking into trouble, but never being the cause of it. On my twenty-first birthday, whilst doing my driving test, I drove into a bank robbery, the police were chasing the robbers and money was flying around. It has given me a trunk full of anecdotes, without being the culprit. Until recently people often remarked on how calm I was, and a previous employee (note: before I fell down a rabbit hole and began writing biographies) wondered if I ‘took something’ for my nerves, or if I was merely dead inside. I’ve always had a blank look and two responses to things: nothing and everything. I would scream if someone touched my things, but I would seem unresponsive if given bad news. Pragmatic, or problematic? I see now all of those little things were clues to the villain of the piece.

All my life I have felt tingly, in childhood I used to say, ‘I can feel my hair growing!’ thinking it the reason for the pins and needles feeling in my head. When I was seven I complained to my GP that my teeth felt dizzy – you can imagine their response. I was never able to sit in a hot bath, my mother remembers me threatening to vomit if she didn’t put me in cold water. I used to loathe the feeling of certain clothes – I still do. In the children’s pool I panicked because I couldn’t breathe, it felt as if something was compressing my torso. I still wait until my food and drink are room temperature, or below. You have no idea how many times, when meeting someone for the first time and going for coffee or lunch, that they point and say: ‘Don’t forget about your —.’ The pins and needles sensations are best described as being injected with a dentist’s needle. Two summers ago I was sitting at my desk when I felt as if I had been stung by bees and I immediately looked down my dress to see if I had. Nothing. Such things come and go, often it’s patches of numbness at the top of my leg or in my lower back. I used to complain that I had no blood, because I was so numb.

My grandmother reminded me that when I was fifteen she had accompanied me to the doctor and I complained about those very things. I could not emphasise one particular symptom, except to say I felt as though my body was shutting down and I had periods of deafness. I still do. He dismissed me with, ‘Have you got any friends?’ I felt like a hypochondriac, however I insisted on a hearing test. It came back clear and that made me feel stupid and worried that my symptoms were the result of my teenage behaviour and doing things I shouldn’t have been. I still lose my hearing but sometimes I have supercharged hearing and can hear a pin drop. I recall another strange attack, when I was sixteen or seventeen, of waking up in excruciating pain in my abdomen and being unable to put my legs down. I managed to stagger to the top of the stairs but fainted in the landing, smacking my face off the door frame and knocking myself out. I woke up screaming in pain and everyone thought my appendix had burst. I was taken to A&E and the doctor pushed on my stomach, asking the round of questions that were and are so familiar to me: ‘Are you pregnant?’ ‘Are you sure you’re not pregnant?’ etc. My grandmother was in the room and I thought she was going to explode. I kept insisting I was not. He gave my stomach a rough push and sent me home. I still don’t know what caused that attack or what was wrong with me. I have also learned that unless a symptom can be affixed to a singular female experience it loses its credibility.

The aforementioned was and is part of my daily life. Mariga Guinness thought it rude to be ill, and I agree. Only recently have I started whinging about what is going on and I think it has done more harm than good, I seem fixated on supernatural feelings. Once I thought it was a ghost, that my Rumanian neighbour had placed a curse on me, as she had threatened to do. When you experience strange attacks any notion of common sense goes out the window. I felt things were intensifying two years ago, when I noticed my speech had changed. I began stuttering a little and my words weren’t as clear. It began during a busy schedule of radio appearances for my Margaret Lockwood biography. I thought I had worked too hard (I had published two books in the one year) and assumed I was burnt out. But it never improved, and I still think my speech and tone of voice is off. Some time, around last year, my mother commented that my behaviour had changed, that she found me ‘joyless’. I am not a particularly optimistic person, my dad used to joke that I was the pepperoni from the Pepperami commercial: ‘I HATE musicals, children, songs’ etc. I said it was because my neighbours were driving me insane and I couldn’t think straight. Or the dog had me up all night. Or I had a deadline and was stressed out. My mum also commented that I used to enjoy my work and was excited about everything, instead I moaned about offers. How dare they invite me to Cheltenham, to be on the One Show, to give a talk on my work etc.

This year has been particularly demanding. I thought I could work on two books (as I had done in 2016), both exciting projects, and it would revive my enthusiasm. Some people have complimented my research, and I call it iceberg research, and it really is, because I wade through hundreds of pages to extract a quote or reveal an unknown anecdote. Instead I found myself wandering around archives in a daze, forgetting to take off my coat and leave my bag in the locker, losing my pencils, forgetting how to search through the catalogue and recall documents. I had been told if I didn’t follow the rules I’d have to leave, and I was mortified. I wondered if I was sleep-deprived or coming down with the ‘flu. It was easy to make excuses, because a lot of things were going on in my private life. I was swept up in deaths and illnesses, whilst trying to research and write. Around that period some additional symptoms and ailments manifested, I began to experience motion sickness and strange falling sensations. I would be sitting on my bed and suddenly I felt as though I’d been dropped from a great height. I often asked people if they felt the earth move, because I often did whilst standing in shops or at the post office. Lights began to affect me, fluorescent lighting being the biggest culprit. I recall an odd feeling which happened when I was twenty-one, it was St Patrick’s day and it felt as if my brain would explode. I went to the GP, only to be told I was experiencing migraines. I had my eyes tested and the optician advised me to return to the GP because the vessels behind my eyes were zig-zagged. Again, the GP said it was migraines. I am still waiting for a migraine.

In recent months I felt spaced out, and I am certain people thought I was drunk or on drugs. I sometimes pretended I was taking a migraine, because I had no other way to explain the detached way in which I treated them, even though I didn’t mean to. I went to Dublin a few months ago and I can’t remember much of it, except walking around feeling displaced, and not caring where I was. That was so unlike me, because I used to be a sponge for atmosphere. Some people might say it was depression but I was and am not depressed – I just didn’t care about my surroundings. I have also lost the ability to plan, and so everything feels last minute and chaotic. It comes and goes.

The week after my birthday in March I began to feel sick. I wondered why I was swollen and I kept saying I was going on a diet. In the past four years I had begun to gain weight and I didn’t know why – I wasn’t fat, but I was heavier than I’d even been. I was always a size 6-8, and in the past year a size 12 was snug. It was so frustrating. I also noticed that I looked different, but I didn’t know why. I then suspected I had a kidney problem because I began to retain fluid and it felt as if my sides would explode. I started taking fluid tablets that weren’t prescribed for me, it was the only relief. I went to my GP about this and half-spaced out I said, ‘I haven’t pee’d in a week!’ It was a crass thing to say, but I felt so desperate. He did his usual check-up and said I should stop drinking coffee and that I had a bladder infection. The nurse ran some tests and was surprised at my high red blood cell count. I was given an anti-biotic, which knocked me out, but I finished the course. I had relief, hurrah, but my sides still ached and a strained feeling travelled down my legs, so once again I rang the GP. He sent me for a pelvic scan and that came back clear, which made me look like a hypochondriac. I continued to suffer from the pain, which was in my pelvis, and sitting down and standing up for long periods of time was horrendous. I began tripping over things and missing the doorstep, which I imagined was down to my pain. I felt dreadful, but I had two books to finish.

Toward the end of summer my mother forced me to go to the GP, a female one this time. She was very good and listened to all of my weird symptoms, did a few basic cognitive tests and checked my reflexes. I told her my arms felt like led and that I had been sleeping a lot. I can’t remember much of the summer, as I spent it asleep. I also had to request two extensions on my book. It was so disheartening, especially when I would fall asleep mid-writing, or forget what I was writing about. I knew what I wanted to type but could not put it into words. She said the symptoms mirrored MS but explained that such symptoms can be the result of a b12 deficiency. Indeed the blood test revealed my b12 levels were low and I am ashamed to say I dismissed the importance of the vitamin, thinking it had something to do with clear skin. However as I began to research I realised b12 is responsible for the nervous system, and let’s face it, mine was a mess. I began a course of b12 injections, which I found painful and it left me with a dead arm. The injections worked wonders, I felt restored to my old self – everyone said I looked brighter, I lost weight, I could think clearly, my speech was good, I was zipping around with energy, I edited like the wind, and I got things done.

Three weeks later my course of b12 injections stopped and I was told to come back every two months. After three days I felt the symptoms returning, minus the brain fog and fatigue. I was given an injection and was told to return two days later for a second one. I did but the male GP refused to sign off on injection. The nurse delivered the news and I started crying, out of frustration and fear, because the symptoms, when they come back, are terrifying – it begins with pins and needles in my mouth, in my tongue, down my face, along my arm and in my hand. I pleaded, ‘I have a book due next week. Please don’t do this to me.’ The GP (the one who I originally visited pre-b12 diagnosis) said I did not need it; that it was mind over matter; that I was addicted; that it had no affect on neurological symptoms; that it was not a drug. He compared me to a jug of water that is continuously filled, to a pond with ripples. Concluding his metaphors he suggested that I was ‘probably just hormonal’. I had often been dismissed with the idea that hormones were giving me these weird symptoms, even during my ultra-sound the technician asked intrusive questions whilst scanning my kidneys, as if somehow that was to blame for everything that had gone wrong. A friend told me that a male GP had once said, ‘You’re a woman. You should be used to feeling rough.’ I didn’t want to tell the GP that of course during certain times my b12 levels felt non-existent, I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking he was right, when he was wrong. Instead I went home and googled remedies to tide me over to my next course of injections. I bought liquid B12, stronger than the solution in the injections, liquid iron, CBD oil etc. I cannot absorb B12 through my digestive system, so a liquid variety is my only option, hence why I cried when it was withheld from me.

I was advised to return to the GP if the symptoms persisted after my b12 injections had finished. Like I said, they came back within three days. I returned to the GP and explained this, but I emphasised I no longer had brain fog or fatigue, only the tingling in my mouth, face, arm. That I still had an aversion to fluorescent lights and hot water, and that, whilst working on my manuscript, I had typed words backwards without meaning to. As a child I often wrote backwards, which caused my teacher concern. The GP’s attitude had changed, she was irritated that I had approached the male GP for a b12 injection even though she was on annual leave. She merely stared at me with a bemused expression which made me feel stupid. I asked why I had these symptoms, and she said she did not know; that often neurological symptoms manifest and then go away. She also listed horrible things such as brain tumours, epilepsy, M.S., motor-neuron disease. My blood ran cold, as motor-neuron disease killed my paternal granny. She then scribbled the name of two private health providers onto a post-it and gave me it, advising me to seek a private MRI scan which will cost a few hundred pounds. I have paid for my healthcare before, but I wondered why she was doing this when, during my last appointment, she suggested I see a neurologist. I emphasised that I feel very self-conscious about my neurological symptoms, because I imagine people think I am drunk, but she just laughed. She then asked if I had any metal implants in my body, and I said no. Really, she had my medical file in front of her, she would have known the answer. My medical file must be sporadically filled with my reporting neurological symptoms. I told her that, as a child, I had the Espstein-Barr virus, which put me in hospital and left me with a murmur in my heart. I asked if such things were connected and she told me to stay off Google. I left, defeated once more.

My symptoms persist but I feel quite lucky that I can say, ‘Only the tingling,’ as though that’s the lesser of all the evils. I have an odd feeling in the back of my neck which crunches when I look up or down. The aversion to lights, hot water etc continue. I want to change my GP and begin again, but I am terrified of learning the truth. Joan Didion sums up my feelings, with her words: ‘I had . . . a sharp apprehension of what it was like to open the door to the stranger and find the strange did indeed have the knife.’