One of the BBC’s most respected and well-known news correspondents, Caroline Wyatt, has spoken of her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis which forced her to quit her job.
Wyatt, the veteran war reporter who became the BBC’s religious affairs correspondent two years ago, revealed last week she was stepping down from reporting duties after being diagnosed with MS.
Wyatt, 49, now uses a stick to help her walk and told Radio Times how she had recently fallen over in the street “which was a really big shock”.
“Reporting news is often about reporting death, particularly in the places I have been,” she said.
“But it’s less terrifying to me to think of being blown up and dying than to think, ‘Gosh, I might decline slowly day by day, losing a little bit of capability every day.’
“And where will I end up? Will I end up in a wheelchair, unable to walk, unable to do all the things I love? And that I think is harder to deal with, because of the effect it has on your family.”
Although she has suffered symptoms of the disease for 25 years, it was only recently diagnosed, something Wyatt said brought a “sense of relief, because finally it had a name.
“But equally I did think, ‘Oh bugger, this is quite serious,’” she said. “Inevitably there is the ‘why me?’ moment. But I think it’s pointless to go back and think ‘if only’, because I chose the life I wanted and I’ve had a bloody fabulous time. I feel really sad now because I’m not going to be a correspondent full time any more – I physically can’t.
“It is what it is. I am not angry, and I don’t want bitterness to start eating away at me. I don’t know what the future holds, but I am determined to make the most of my life,” she said.
Asked if she was scared by it, Wyatt said: “Yes, because every day you wake up you feel different. Some days you feel relatively normal, other days your brain is so foggy you can’t think. You forget words, you forget names.
“It’s that absolute sense that your body is betraying you. That you are not in control of it, it is in control of you. I am hoping that at some stage I will get back to walking without the stick. But maybe I am in denial.”
The BBC’s former Moscow correspondent, Wyatt spent seven years as the corporation’s defence correspondent, including a stint being embedded with British troops during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
She first suffered numbness in her arm 25 years ago and, while reporting from Moscow in 2001, “got very wobbly on my feet and started bumping into things”.
“It’s only been the past two years when I’ve had to admit that actually I have got a problem. When I was tired I just hit a wall, and had to go to bed whether it was 5pm or 6pm. I just wasn’t bouncing back,” she told the new issue of Radio Times.
“I’m slightly unsteady on my feet at the moment. I fell over in the street the other day, which was a really big shock. Neither my vision nor my balance are particularly good at the moment, so I am a bit cooped up at home.”
She added: “Yes, I think it’s got more serious. It’s possible it’s gone into what’s known as secondary progressive, which means drugs will be of less help. Basically the body won’t repair itself in the way it has done previously.
“When I woke up with double vision about four weeks ago, I sat on the edge of the bed and thought, ‘Good grief, if I don’t save my sight and do something fairly radical about the way that I’m living, then it is actually entirely possible I will lose my sight, and if I lose my sight I won’t be able to do all the other things I want to do in life – whether that’s painting, or writing dreadful poetry.
“It was really quite a bleak moment, where for the first time I sat down and looked it in the face and thought, ‘Bugger.’”
But Wyatt will continue to work for the BBC, with a hoped-for return to radio broadcasting later in the year. She is also planning to cover the canonisation of Mother Theresa in Rome in September for BBC television.
Wyatt, who attended a Catholic school for girls, said: “Yes, I do [have a faith]. I have had moments of incredible doubt, but I do still have a faith.
“Has it helped? Yes. This is not something you can deal with on your own and I have been so touched and so overwhelmed by the number of people who have said they’re praying for me and thinking of me. And that really helps.”
She added: “I am incredibly lucky and incredibly blessed. I have quite an optimistic disposition. I always hope for the best but if the worst happens, just deal with it. But I realise now that I did live incredibly selfishly.
“I pursued my career because it was interesting. I wasn’t there for my ex-boyfriend’s birthday. I wasn’t there for Christmasses and many other significant events.
“It’s made me realise that the really, really important things are your family and your close friends, so to a large degree it is reshaping my view of what really matters.”
Following publication of the Radio Times interview on Tuesday, Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of the MS Society, said: “Multiple sclerosis is very unpredictable and leads to a range of symptoms such as poor vision and balance, fatigue and disability.
“It’s different for everyone and that means making a decision about how and when to tell your employer is very personal.
“We’ve seen that Caroline Wyatt has spoken in the Radio Times about her worries around how her MS will progress and how it’s hard to deal with because it fluctuates so much. We know these are concerns that a lot of people with MS face and we’d urge anyone facing these issues to get in touch with our helpline on 0808 800 8000.”
