Loose Women star shares health update after nightmarish diagnosis left her looking 'permanently dishevelled'
Loose Women 's Andrea McLean shared a health update after a nightmarish diagnosis left her looking 'permanently dishevelled.'
The presenter, 55, who quit the show in 2020, was 24 hours from death after being rushed to hospital with severe pneumonia and sepsis at the end of last year.
In an update to Instagram on Wednesday, she revealed she was heading back to the TV studio for the first time in a while, but had suffered 'quite a lot of hair loss.'
Andrea explained: 'On my way to do my first live television for a long time. I won't lie, I'm nervous. I'm looking forward to it, because I love doing telly stuff, but because it's been a while I'm a bit scared.
'I know it's because I care and I want to do a good job and not look stupid, which is absolutely normal. I'm nervouscited.'
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She continued: 'We all feel like this. It'll be fine once I'm doing it. Deep down I know it will. I also seem to look permanently dishevelled!
'I have lost quite a lot of hair with Covid and the strong medication after pneumonia and it doesn't seem to behave like it used to.
'I'm embracing it as there's not much else I can do. There's a kind of freedom to that too. I'm liking the rebellion of it.'
Andrea recently revealed she was only 24 hours from death after she was found collapsed at home by her husband in December.
She has now admitted she feels as though she has had a second chance at life as she said it's 'changed my life forever'.
Speaking to The Mirror, the star explained: 'I didn't realise how severe my illness was at the time. But the doctors had told my husband Nick that had I not got to hospital when I did, had we waited another 24 hours to call for help, I may not be here now.'
She added: 'What happened over the next few weeks changed my life for ever.'
In December Andrea collapsed with the flu and was lying on the floor for an hour before she was found by her husband.
In an update to Instagram on Wednesday, she revealed she was heading back to the TV studio for the first time in a while, but had suffered 'quite a lot of hair loss' (pictured right before her illness in November 2024)
She was then blue lighted to hospital where after a series of X-ray and CT scans they discovered she had severe pneumonia, Acute Kidney Injury and sepsis.
Explaining she has had Covid three times in the past as well as long Covid, when she caught the flu off her daughter she couldn't fight it off and her 'body just gave up'.
Reflecting on the terrifying ordeal she added: 'It was only a few weeks after I got home that I realised the magnitude of what had happened – that if I hadn't gone into hospital that day, I may not be here now.'
Andrea now wants to seize the day and focus on what is truly important to her after having such a scary brush with death.
The star spent four days in hospital and had to return every day in the week following to receive antibiotic drips.
And in February she still wasn't back to full health after she told fans her life still wasn't 'back to normal' as she expected it would be.
She also thanked her husband Nick who she said's 'life stopped' during that time too as he drove her to the hospital everyday, waited for her at clinics four hours at a time and cooked everyone dinner, before putting her to bed.
But she was not feeling better just yet, as she added: 'It's now February, and I'm still not well enough to handle normal stuff like getting up and rushing out the door to do the jobs I'd been booked to do, because every part of that process would end with me falling down, or at the very least sitting on a tube station floor feeling very unwell and embarrassed at the stares.
'I'm still having 'funny turns' while out for a walk, or attempting the mildest of exercise.'
Andrea explained that in December she came down with the flu, but things got progressively worse.
'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,' she said.
'We rang the GP who told us to call 999 immediately. The ambulance team were amazing. My blood pressure was so low I couldn't stand, and I was in a lot of pain.'
She added: 'Then my X-ray and CT scans came back. I had severe pneumonia, Acute Kidney Injury and sepsis.
'Things happened quickly; drips, super-strong antibiotics via IV and orally, and I was transferred to the Emergency Assessment Ward.'
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