She was forced to give up her beloved flat in London, and found herself sequestered in the spare bedroom of her boyfriend's house, all light expunged by means as varied as foil and UV-filtering film taped to windows, blackout blinds and curtains, and a draught excluder which doubles as a light excluder stretched across the bottom of her door. The first thing to fall by the wayside was her job as a public servant in a high-profile government department - no longer could she walk the corridors of power. And so it was that Anna Lyndsey experienced a 'falling away from normal.' Photosensitive Seborrhoeic Dermatitis, 'a well-recognized though rare syndrome which is extremely disabling,' is also incurable. When her condition was finally recognized, the prognosis was bleak. Doctors were initially puzzled, and the diagnostic process slow. Neither was it just her face that was affected before long, even the slightest exposure to any form of light, however weak, left her entire body aflame. Slowly, but relentlessly, her condition deteriorated until the horrific realization dawned: it was not just artificial light that caused the problem - it was all light, including and especially sunlight. Sitting at her desk in April 2005, typing furiously to make a work deadline, the skin on her face began to burn, 'like the worst kind of sunburn.like someone is holding a flame-thrower to my head.' Soon, it wasn't just the computer screen that caused this reaction - so too did her office's fluorescent lighting. A deceptively innocent-sounding malady, it would prove far more sinister, destructive and long-lasting than a lunar shadow passing briefly over the sun. That something is a skin disorder called Photosensitive Seborrhoeic Dermatitis (see ' Beyond the Book'). 'My breath stopped in my throat, as though the shadow itself sucked away the air.' Little could she have known then that she would soon find herself on a similar trajectory - in less than six short years from that summer's day, Anna's life would collide with something that would ultimately banish all the light from her existence and condemn her to perpetual darkness. 'I will never forget the speed, the terrible speed of that approach,' she recalls in her memoir, Girl in the Dark. As the moon made its way inexorably across the sun, its shadow gradually obliterating the warm, life-giving light, Anna watched in fascination. From this vantage point, she bore witness to that rare astronomical phenomenon, a total solar eclipse. In August 1999, Anna Lyndsey travelled to Alderney, one of the smallest islands in the archipelago known as the Channel Islands, situated off the southwest coast of England. A rare, crippling medical disorder saps the light away - both literally and metaphorically - from this memoirist's life.

Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey