I am a Biblical Leper

OK, not quite. But I have been very very poorly

Hey Everyone!

I know I haven’t posted for a while. And you deserve to know why.

In the process of moving house (finally bought my own home!), working weekend breakfasts with an unholy early alarm and then largely working Monday to Friday as well, and having not had a holiday since 2024, I was getting burn out.

I could tell I was, as my atopy was the worst I had ever seen it. And I have severe atopy. My legs were so red it was like having sunburn every day and I couldn’t sleep for the itching. It became painful to walk. To roll over in bed. To have water touch my skin. The only time I felt comfortable was lying in the bath after the initial burn subsided. My skin became a war zone, red, inflamed, swollen, sore. And it was taking it’s toll on me psychologically too.

People started noticing how I was scratching while presenting and made comments about that. Fair enough, I did look like a smack addict going cold turkey. But atopy isn’t an easy condition to hide. More and more make up went on covering blotches and patches, the rest of my body looked like I was having nightly chemical peels and the worse it got, the worse I felt, so the worse it got. It became a doom loop.

I finally found a spare day to go to the hospital where I was immediately put on strong oral steroids. They worked instantly, wiping out the bright red flush all over my body and allowing the skin to finally begin to heal.

But the thing about steroids is they essentially shut down the immune system. Which has its drawbacks.

You may remember I took some time off before having had severe flu and then shingles. Well, the problem with viruses is that they tend to just hang around in the shadows and when your immune system is low, they take the opportunity to make a grand reappearance. And what better than the immune system being forcibly suppressed.

Yet what happened next was worse than before.

The shingles virus swept back in as the steroids shut down my immune response, but this time, teamed up with dry skin on my face (all the make up for presenting and air conditioned studios don't help matters) and made some sort of evil chimera that I won’t describe as I don't want to put you off your dinner, but a photo of me would definitely work better as an appetite suppressant than Ozempic.

So I went to hospital with this crazy rash on my face. They sent me to another hospital. Who sent me to A&E because apparently the eczema/shingles chimera is no laughing matter. We are talking risks of going blind or it spreading to the brain and organs. Who knew eczema could be deadly?!

The doctor mused over whether to admit me fully and IV antiviral medicine, but in the end I was sent home with a motherload of tablets instead. Which I am popping like a 90s raver.

I am pleased to say they are working. Rapidly. And I will make a full recovery and be back on the beat sooner, rather than later, I hope.

But I have also realised at the root of all of this was stress. Burn out. Trying to do too much. Consultancy, foreign media analysis, everyone's podcast, breakfast shifts with a 3am alarm, and all the while constantly riding the wave of cortisol that live presenting naturally triggers, not helped by the general doom and gloom of constantly staring into the abyss of dystopia, which current affairs always feels like, but added onto that the jeopardy of whether I would get into trouble for what I was saying. Whether Starmer's Stasi would come after me. I haven’t had a day off since last year. Not a full, proper, phone down, no news, no ‘media hits’ day off, or period of time off, where I wasn’t having to be “That Alex Woman” and could just be Alex from Gloucester. Sunbathing in the garden with her cat and a mind blissfully empty.

So when I do come back after a short period of recovery, I’m afraid I will be doing less. I need to balance the days when I am yelling truth to power, or being the ring leader of communal catharsis, and have actual whole days where my only worry is what deliciousness I want to cook that day.

I will focus more on Substack - because I love it. Because I love you. Because you have chosen to follow me and support me. And I dont want to take that for granted. And this is my place to do things as I want. When I want. How I want. And I love that freedom.

But I will have to cut down on other things. All the appearances. All the lives. It was utterly unsustainable before and I refuse to wind up in hospital again.

So there you have it. That hopefully explains my prolonged period of silence.

But when I do emerge from my Biblical Leprosy in a week or two, I will hopefully have taken the time to refocus on my commitments and trust me, this site isn’t going anywhere. If anything, I want to focus more on providing original content for you, the people who really matter to me, straight from my wonderful new countryside abode.

Thank you for your patience folks. You mean the world to me.

(Genuinely have tears in my eyes writing this!)

Not That Alex Woman.

Just Alex xxx