I would like to be able to start this story with a stellar anecdote about how exactly my life imploded. “I was walking down Sunset Boulevard and Harry Styles ran me down in a Ferrari.” “I was dancing on a podium in Ibiza when a falling speaker semi- decapitated me.” In reality, it was much more mundane, as these things inevitably tend to be. I went to the pub and I caught the flu. That was it.
I spent Christmas 2017 with what I thought was a regular illness. By February, I was unable to breathe or move. Flu had become flu complications and I was strapped to a ventilator mask. My energy had all but disappeared to the extent that even breathing was a high-end task. In my bedroom, alone, plastic casing enveloped my skin. I looked like Darth Vader, if Darth Vader spent a lot of time in Primark pyjamas. The cliche for this sort of thing is to say that the months that followed were a blur. But as anyone who has ever been through anything knows, really, it is the opposite. You wish it was a blur. You would pay good money for a haze, to black out for as long as it takes to get through the worst and re-emerge fabulous, like a contestant in a Netflix makeover show.
