Never heard of these methylation crisis things Mrs D - is this a mineral or vitamin deficiency of some kind? I did take folic acid while on the drugs you mention yes. I will ask my GP to recheck my foliate, B12 and ferritin levels a well as fasting cortisol on Monday with full blood count.

Very interesting about the art and toxicity - the hospital consultant asked the same thing so I've been researching. The answer is that I did paint messily for many years and I often got paint in my mouth and skin. As my skin was often covered in open eczema sores I have wondered if this could have poisoned me somehow?

But my artist friend who is quite obsessive and used to have to do health and safety checks for aarge scale art and health centre he ran - told me last night that this was very very unlikely as none of the paints I used contained lead or any other toxic chemical. I have used mainly embroidery now for 7 or 8 years because the lifetime of eczema defeated me finally. The eczema went overnight but I suspect this was hormonal because I was perinenopausal at the time and had severe eczema and alopecia as a tiny kid and until I was 45. Ironically I then got RA very badly in my hands for several years so found stitching very hard going.

Other sources of possible poison/ contamination could be my mercury fillings, high levels of radon gas where I live and other environmental factors. I can't afford to replace all my filings with the other kind (which contain synthetic oestrogen and tend to fall our very quickly with me) but was planning to ask the maxillofacial surgeon about this - given one of the doctors said that my symptoms corresponded with some sort of long term poisoning.

Regarding the Radon gas - well our house is for now sale and we are hoping to move away at the end of the summer. I used to get severe rhinitis and the other skin related stuff until we moved here . So when it went away I blamed the intensive farming and pesticides we were surrounded by at the time.

More recently I have decided that my body has always attacked itself since I was little one way or the other. My mum starved me as a baby to the point I was 24 hours off dying (by mistake re inexperience and lack of breast milk) and a professor I saw last year agreed that this could have triggered fight or flight/ autoimmunity. Somehow I've survived each period of crisis - but never has to survive this level of crisis before and I am, as you say, getting older and somewhat less able to withstand it.

Incidentally both my parents died at 73 of vascular dementia leading to heart failure so I do worry rather about vascular stuff. Also did you know that there has been a huge upsurge in autoimmune disease since the Ebola crisis? Apparently survivors are getting autoimmune diseases now - not sure which sort but I thought this very interesting if it is true.