Penny Lancaster, 54, details how co-star spotted health condition after symptoms dismissed by doctors: ‘I didn’t believe!’
Penny Lancaster shared with fans how her Loose Women co-star Coleen Nolan managed to help her identify a health diagnosis after months of suffering.
Lancaster, 54, explained how doctors misdiagnosed her while she was suffering a range of symptoms a few years ago, but that Nolan, 60, set her on the right path.
The model and television personality has been part of the ITV chat show panel since 2014, establishing herself as a favourite on the daytime programme.
She candidly reflected on her struggles to be diagnosed as she suffered symptoms of menopause while she chatted during a recent episode of the Loose Women podcast.
Lancaster, who is married to rocker Rod Stewart, 80, has in recent years been open about the subject in order to raise awareness of the ordeal she went through.
Touching on the subject again, Lancaster revealed her co-host had helped her while the two women talked through audience queries.
Nolan explained how menopause symptoms usually present unexpectedly, and how it’s often other women who reassure sufferers about what they are going through.
“Well, you did that for me,” Lancaster noted as she recalled: “My doctor prescribed me antidepressants, and I was telling you guys all of the symptoms that I was going through, and you went, ‘Penny, it’s the menopause.'”
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The presenter went on to admit how she had initially been sceptical, believing she wasn’t old enough to be in the throes of the menopause.
“I was like, ‘I’m not old enough’, I didn’t believe I was there,” she reflected before Nolan pointed out to her friend that perimenopause symptoms can begin as early as a woman’s 30s.
“I was about 45, and I do remember, like you say, a lot of relationships having that conversation, but I didn’t know about menopause, nor did Rod,” Lancaster continued.
The discussion comes shortly after the ITV star shared how an outburst witnessed by Stewart and their two sons led to her seeking help over her symptoms.
Speaking to Dame Prue Leith on a different episode of the show’s podcast, she explained: “I thought I was going through a depression and I made this dinner for my boys and my husband, and I was calling out and calling out.”
She described the relentless nature of lockdown meal preparation as “endless,” adding: “It was breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you know, forever – and I was just fed up that they weren’t coming down when I’d asked them.”
When her family finally entered the kitchen, Lancaster had reached breaking point, confessing: “I literally picked up the plates and burst into tears, and threw them across the kitchen. The dinner ended up on the walls, I ended up on the floor in a crumpled mess.
“Rod went, ‘Boys, quick, leave mummy, give her a minute’, and he came over to me and he said, ‘I’m sorry, darling, are you okay?'”
She continued: “My husband was like, ‘Right, we need to get you to a doctor, this isn’t the mummy we know, this isn’t Penny, there’s something beyond you worrying about lockdown, there’s something else going on.’
“And it was the side effects of menopause, it just kind of blew a circuit. So, that was that dinner disaster,” she explained.
The television personality has been married to Stewart since 2007. The couple met in 1999 and share two children together, Alistair and Aiden.
The couple shared earlier this week how they still enjoy romantic trips together, with the husband and wife posting social media snaps as they dined at a Copenhagen restaurant.