Until a few years ago, I would generally have called myself a casual Christian - one who put C of E on official forms, and thought little more about it. If asked, I would claim to be a Christian, and I tried to live my life by Christian ideals, though I never went the extra mile I should have done. Like a lot of people, I didn't make time for Church on Sunday (though I still stand by my attitude at that time when I say that there are a lot of people who make noise about being good Christians just because they go to Church one morning a week but are the biggest hypocrites, because of the way they live their lives the rest of the week!)

Anyway, I cruised through life not really thinking about religion as being of much relevance to me. It was just a sort of given in the background that I tried to be a "good" person.

Then, Quantum Leap brought a miracle into my life. I came to the series quite late - through BBC2 midway through Season 4 on reruns. After only a couple of episodes, I was well and truly hooked. Soon after, I heard the series had been cancelled. Typical, I thought, I just find something I enjoy, and they take it off.

This was in the summer of '94 and coincidentally both my children contracted whooping cough around this time (though the docs argued at length and wouldn'tagree to call it that). As they are both also asthmatic, we had six months of sleepless nights where every twenty minutes or so I would have to go to one or the other of them and sit them up to help them breathe.

After a few weeks of wishing I could get some sleep, I decided to use my wakeful moments to concoct a story that I would like to see Sam and Al tackle if I were to come up with an episode, since there would be no more "official" ones. I found it too hard to write in script format, so I turned to novelization. I'd think about the story in the wee small hours, and jot down odd notes during the day whenever I had a moment.

Spurred on by my driving instructor who told me to succeed I had to do things for myself, not to please others, I eventually completed the story now posted under Al's Place fanfic section (on the messageboard) as Terror Firma.

Now I had the bug. Ginjer Buchanan at Berkeley Publishing was nice enough to say that the story was publishable and she would consider it for the third of the 94 releases. In the end I lost out, I believe to "Loch Ness Leap", but I was inspired by her comments to put my second plot on hold and work on another story "set in the UK to satisfy British fans".

It was this story that led to the miracle.

Even if nobody was to read the stories (except my Mum who proof read, and bullied me into submitting them) I believed in being as accurate as possible in all things (geographical, historical, medical etc.) Without wanting to give away too much of the sub-plot of "Run for Their Lives" (which I intend to post soon) I wanted a reason for a "good guy" at the project to go bad and attack Ziggy with an axe, so that Gushie (in a tribute to Dennis Wolfberg) could die a hero protecting her.

I looked in the local library for books on schizophrenia and brain tumours etc. What I found were two books by the clinical neurologist Harrold Klawans. One, Newton's madness, gave me just what I was looking for in mercury poisoning. Perfect for my plot. The stories (case studies written for laymen to understand) were so fascinating - including a case of a condition I had suffered called trigeminal neuralgia, very painful, but that is another story - that I read the whole of both books.

The title story of the other book, Toscanini's fumble, dealt with the condition suffered by the orchestra conductor Toscanini - TSI's (sorry, can't remember what it stands for). When reading his symptoms, alarm bells started ringing. I showed the story to my father-in-law, who had been seeing specialist after specialist, receiving treatment for epilepsy and various other conditions, without proper diagnosis or positive results.

"Sound familiar?" I asked him.

"That's me!" he replied.

That same week he had yet another consultation with yet another specialist. He took the book and showed it to the doctor. Turns out that was what his problem was. It is extremely rare, and very hard to diagnose. As it is a circulatory problem, the only definitive test is to take the blood pressure in both arms at the same time, and it reads different. As this is not a standard test, there is no reason to do it unless you are looking for the condition, and no reason to look for the condition unless you do the test. Catch 22.

The doctor said Trevor could have remained misdiagnosed for years. Now many of you may say this is just a coincidence, but the timing and everything is just too weird for me. I strongly believe that I was led to that book by a higher power (GFTW!) and I am going to stick my neck out and say it was God.

Had I not become a fan of QL; had I not been encouraged to write and research my own fanfics; had I not devised that precise plot, we may never have known what was wrong with Trevor.