Loose Women presenter Andrea McLean has opened up about being rushed to hospital and battling with pneumonia and sepsis.
The TV host used her Substack newsletter I've Been Thinking to recall how she spent her time recently in a hospital bed after coming down with flu in December.
"Like lots of people, I sucked it up, thinking it would pass in a week or so," she wrote. "After seven days of sweating and shivering, with a raging temperature and chills, and pain in my chest and back, my wee turned brown.
"I collapsed in the bathroom, and like the adverts you see on telly with the elderly, I lay there for an hour before my husband found me.
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"We rang the GP who told us to call 999 immediately."
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After being taken straight to A&E where she was diagnosed with severe pneumonia, Acute Kidney Injury and sepsis, McLean was transferred to an emergency assessment ward.
She recalled being in "almost constant pain" during the two days and nights she spent there, and also experienced "sensory overload with the screams, shouting and sound and smell".
McLean was later transferred to a respiratory ward, where she recalled a nurse asking her how she was feeling.
"You know that thing where you’ve held it all together and then someone nice asks how you are, and you fall apart?" she said. "That happened.
"Rather than just saying: 'I'm fine' as I usually did, because I was aware that there were people there who were 'really' sick, I said how I felt.
"Tears leapt from my eyes, and for the first time since I'd been admitted to hospital, I cried. I didn't know how to explain it, so I just said, 'It's so noisy, and the lights are so bright, and I'm in a lot of pain'."
In her newsletter, McLean recalled the visitors who came to see the other patients on the ward, and shared details about how some of them formed a friendship with each other.
She also reflected on some of the more challenging times on the ward when patients became distressed or upset, often during the night.
Following five days in hospital where she was treated with antibiotics, pain medication and given fluids for dehydration, doctors agreed McLean could return home – as long as she visited hospital daily for continued outpatient treatment.
She closed her post by thanking her husband Nick Feeney for his support through her illness.
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"He drove me home, made everyone dinner, listened to them all talk about their day, then put me to bed. And then did it all again the next day. And the next," she recalled.
"You don't think about the impact being poorly has on the person who has to look after you, when you are so used to looking after yourself.
"But Nick's 2025 didn’t get started until a few days ago, when I was finally stable enough to be left alone in the house all day, without the fear of me keeling over."
McLean said that five weeks since she was first taken to hospital, she feels that life "is still not 'back to normal'" yet for her, but acknowledged that many things in life are beyond a person's control.
"Life stopped for a while, but that's all. I'm not better yet, but I will be, and I can't make that happen any faster than the time it will take," she added.
Loose Women airs on weekdays at 12.30pm on ITV1 and streams on ITVX.
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
