A TNT Sports presenter lay in bed telling his wife “I want to die” after falling ill on live TV.
Darrell Currie became sick while hosting the broadcaster’s coverage of Celtic’s Champions League clash with Real Madrid in 2022.
XDarrell Currie has opened up over his health battle and admits he ‘wanted to die’[/caption]
AlamyThe ace used to be one of the top sports presenters around[/caption]
The 43-year-old was one of the biggest presenters on TNT Sports, then known as BT Sport, at the time.
But his illness has since derailed his career on the box.
Currie told Scotland Tonight: “It felt like a bomb went off in my head. It honestly was like an explosion inside my brain.
“I remember, in the middle of a chat, sort of holding onto my chair. It felt like there had been an earthquake in the studio.”
Currie continued to present but weeks later things got even worse during coverage of Scotland vs the Republic of Ireland.
He continued: “That night I knew it was too much. And I just thought ‘I’m going to fall over. I’m going to black out. This is really bad’.
“A producer said to me, ‘I think you should go home’.
“I left the stadium and thought to myself, ‘It’s going to be a long time before I’m back.’”
Currie has since undergone tests and treatment for various conditions including Lyme disease, multiple sclerosis and arachnoiditis – a rare form of spinal inflammation.
And he admits there was a point when he wanted to stop living after failing to get a proper diagnosis.
Currie said: “There were so many weird symptoms, including the dizziness and everything else, but it was like my body was completely broken.
“There was almost no function. I was in bed for a couple of days. Probably at that time I thought, ‘I could die here’, because they were giving me everything.
“Doctors were sending medication, pain killers, the strongest stuff you can imagine. And nothing was helping at all. I thought, ‘this might be it.’
“You still think, ‘why me?’ There would be times I was lying in bed and saying to my wife, ‘I just want to die because it can’t be worth living on like this, I don’t want to be the burden’.
“Is it worth being alive if things were gonna get worse?”
Currie is now undergoing natural treatments in London, having had 20 MRIs while being diagnosed with Lyme disease.
He added: “There was nothing that was really completing the story to say, ‘this is what’s wrong with you’, and it was a medical merry-go-round.
“I could tell they had no idea what was wrong with me and they were just giving me medication. I would go back and eventually I would take them because… you trust, don’t you?
“I got diagnosed with Lyme disease – chronic Lyme disease, I was told
“I dived into this treatment. I did six months of antibiotics and they were saying I had to go and do intravenous antibiotics off the back of that and the quotes were eyewatering.
“Tens of thousands of pounds… I couldn’t keep on spending money. I was running out of money and you have to prioritise.”
After initially missing his time on TV, Currie is now focused on getting better for his family.
He noted: “I do miss the people and I miss the broadcasting at times.
“I think at the start, when you get ill, you chase getting back to where you were, and I think this feeling of, ‘I need to get back to where I was’ is in your head a lot at the start when you’re unwell.
“It’s not healthy, so after about a year, I sort of lost the feeling of desperation to get back. It was more, ‘I need to live. I need to be alive for the sake of my family.’”
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