Pain from chronic illness felt as if I’d been hit with a baseball bat, says Young
Former Desert Island Discs host is ‘too sad’ to listen to show since ill health forced her to quit the role
‘I just thought, soldier on. You don’t want to admit defeat, do you? I was shovelling down painkillers’
THE broadcaster Kirsty Young, kept from the airwaves for four years by chronic illness, has told how fibromyalgia left her struggling to drive and cook.
Speaking publicly about her condition for the first time, Ms Young, formerly the presenter of Desert Island Discs, said that “the wrong medics and the wrong medication” had sent her down “lots of blind alleys” in her quest for recovery.
In an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine, Ms Young, 53, said her pain had been so bad it felt as though she had been hit “with a baseball bat” and that she would wake up feeling as if she had “glass in my joints”.
Ms Young, 53, was suffering from what turned out to be rheumatoid arthritis, with secondary fibromyalgia, a long-term condition that causes pain all over the body.
The condition causes sufferers to feel extremely tired. “It’s like somebody had drugged me, like you’d taken a sleeping tablet at the wrong time in the day and you were completely losing it,” she added.
Quitting Desert Island Discs was “clearly the only option”, Ms Young told the publication. She was succeeded by Lauren Laverne and her sadness at losing the show, she said, has left her unable to listen to it since.
Over the course of her ordeal, Ms Young felt depressed. “Yeah, I definitely did. I’m not a medic, I don’t know the difference between low mood and depression, but I remember talking to my specialist about that. He said: ‘Well, of course, if you’re dealing with a chronic pain disorder, that’s absolutely a symptom’.”
Ms Young is married to Nick Jones, the founder of Soho House members’ club, with whom she has two children and two step-children.
She had kept her illness from the children, she said, adding: “I just thought, soldier on. You don’t want to admit defeat, do you? I was shovelling down the painkillers.”
Ms Young said that, with the help of a specialist and a pared-down lifestyle, she weaned herself off most of her medications.
“She did not know whether she would work again, but has agreed to host the BBC’S Jubilee coverage. “It’s a unique moment. We’ll never see it again, certainly in our lifetimes and maybe never, so I couldn’t resist.”
The job will entail four days of live broadcasts. Ms Young said she did not know whether her comeback would extend beyond those four days. “It’s a beautifully self-contained thing,” she told the magazine. “I’m going to see what it feels like. It’s not like I’m committing to a two-year contract.
“I’ll see if I make a good enough job of it and what other people think.”