‘My career may have blinded me to my MS’
As her latest treatment fails, the BBC’s Caroline Wyatt tells Victoria Lambert that she probably put her work before her health
There is one truth of which BBC journalist Caroline Wyatt will never be certain. Had she not spent so many years steadfastly covering wars and conflict across the world for the BBC, would she now be fighting the mother of all battles – back home?
“It’s something I have to live with,” says 52-year-old Wyatt, “but will probably never truly reconcile. Did my dedication to my career blind me to the reality that I was becoming seriously unwell? Possibly.”
Wyatt, who now presents for Radio 4’s PM and the BBC World Service, has multiple sclerosis (MS), a progressive illness that affects the brain and spinal cord. With MS, which affects about 100,000 people in the UK, the coating that protects the nerves (myelin) is damaged.
Its effects are invidious and intermittent, but overall worsening: from pain in the eyes and bouts of double vision to fatigue and brain fog to stomach upsets to loss of overall strength, especially in the legs – meaning sufferers walk unsteadily or may need to use a wheelchair. Wyatt has known all of these.
One of the cruellest symptoms for a journalist has been the gradual loss of feeling in her hands, which is costing her the ability to write.
This also makes it difficult for her to paint, something the journalist has long enjoyed. “I take pencils and paper everywhere – especially on holiday, but I used to take them to Afghanistan and Iraq, too.”
Indeed, Wyatt has donated a still life of a fish on a plate to a new exhibition at the Houses of Parliament, organised by the MS Society, which opens on Monday.
It was painted at Wyatt’s sunny, spacious central London flat, where
we meet. Here, among the books on politics, history and travel, are mountains of box files referring to her many postings during her career at the BBC – she joined as a graduate trainee in 1991 after studying English and German at the University of Southampton and then print journalism at City University.
Wyatt has been posted to Berlin (during German reunification), Bonn, Moscow and Paris, but viewers will recognise her as easily from stints in conflict zones: Iraq, Kosovo and Chechnya.
Afghanistan, Wyatt recalls, was where she came closest to death. “We were in Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province,” she says insouciantly, “covering the Afghan presidential elections in 2009. I’d been interviewing the local governor and then someone tried to kill him. A bomb landed a couple of metres away. We were sheltered by a wall.”
Later that day her armoured vehicle drove over a roadside bomb, which failed to detonate properly.
Perhaps such experiences are why Wyatt is so calm about her current situation, as we talk today; for much of her career, there has been a constant need to balance risk and face fears.
“I am aware of the randomness of fate,” she says.
She was, looking back, aware that her health was not quite as good as a foreign correspondent might want. Stomach upsets were not rare, and Wyatt suffered sporadic pins and needles in her hands, which sometimes escalated to loss of feeling.
The symptoms began just after she joined the BBC in 1992, and doctors diagnosed repetitive strain injury (RSI). Once she began working abroad and to camera, her keyboard hours (and the pain) were reduced.
However, the constant travelling was leaving her worn out – although she blamed jet-lag. She suffered bouts of pain and blurriness in her eyes too.
Then in 2001, aged 34, Wyatt collapsed in Moscow. After being sent for scans, she was told a lesion on her brain might suggest MS.
“I wasn’t terribly surprised,” she admits. “I had googled my symptoms. But the neurologists weren’t sure
– my walking, normally the first area to deteriorate, was fine, so the diagnosis wasn’t definitive.” Instead, chronic fatigue syndrome was suggested.
This marked an existential moment for Wyatt. “I had to decide what I wanted to do with my life. Did I want to spend what energy I had on my work or on family life?”
At the back of her mind was a niggling question: if she did have MS, was it reasonable to have children? “Everyone will feel differently about this,” she stresses. “I was concerned about the genetic possibility of passing the disease on, especially as my cousin has MS.”
Though the disease is not directly inherited, she explains, “scientists have found about 100 genes that are connected to the condition”.
Moreover, she was concerned at how the constant tiredness might affect her as a mother of young children. Complicating matters – or perhaps simplifying them – her long-term relationship broke down at the same time.
“I decided to keep going and just manage myself,” she says, with a shrug. “I love what I do.”
In 2014, Wyatt was offered the post of religious affairs correspondent, based in the UK. Then in 2016, she collapsed again – this time in Parliament Square. “I woke up the next day with double vision; my brain couldn’t process what was in front of it.”
Within three months, she had been formally diagnosed with MS.
“It was almost a relief,” Wyatt says, although she looks uncharacteristically sad when she says this. “I knew I couldn’t wiggle out of it. I had to face it.”
She took two different drugs, but neither worked and Wyatt began deteriorating rapidly. Researching potential therapies, she found that stem cell transplants were gaining attention.
Wyatt’s doctors weren’t keen on the idea, and the nature of the lesions on her brain excluded her from a UK trial.
Undeterred, she found a reputable centre in Mexico and spent £62,000 (including flights and recovery in a hotel) for the procedure, which was carried out in January 2017.
It was gruelling: two rounds of chemotherapy to kill off her old immune system before Wyatt’s stem cells were removed, treated to re-boot them and then transplanted back in.
For two glorious weeks after her return, Wyatt felt back to her old self. “The symptoms disappeared,” she says.
But then, gradually, they slunk back. While many patients find the stem cell transplant miraculous in its effect, Wyatt, it transpired, was one of the 20-25 per cent who get no benefit.
Two and a half years later, she is back to where she started, and her walking is worse. The one lasting change – and for which she is most grateful – is to her voice.
“MS had been affecting my speech; I had started dropping words randomly from sentences and slurring. A nightmare for a broadcaster.
“Thankfully, the treatment seems to have sorted that out.”
Although the treatment would not have been available if Wyatt had been diagnosed in her 20s, she has been left with some “what-ifs”.
“My life was physically draining, 18-hour days, carrying heavy flak jackets and kit about. Plus the constant stomach upsets meant courses of antibiotics, something which has been linked to damaging the immune system.
“But I don’t regret anything. My career has been such a privilege and a passion.”
For the future, she is positive. She envisages moving to the country and a garden. “After seeing so much death and destruction,” she says, “I want to grow things and look at beauty.”
Apart from that, it’s a waiting game. “I have to believe that these wonderful scientists around the world will find something which can repair the damage to my nervous system. It would be wonderful to wake up and just feel normal again.”
‘I had to decide. Did I want to spend what energy I had on work or on family life?’