Women with disabilities are the biggest minority group in the world, but are still shut out of society. In an extract from her new book, the writer reveals how that is changing – and what more needs to be done
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.
