Ex-Bake Off judge Prue Leith has revealed she was rushed to hospital after her husband feared she was having a stroke.
The 86-year-old was unable to speak while on holiday in Yorkshire, leading to her husband, John Playfair, frantically calling 999 after her speech became an ‘incomprehensible jumble of disconnected words’.
The slurred speech followed a migraine attack which caused her to lose half her vision and bring on ‘a bright circle of flickering, coloured lights’ – however these were symptoms she had experienced before.
But when she could no longer speak coherently, John called Prue’s doctor who asked her to perform typical at-home tests, like raising an arm or clenching a fist, which Prue was still able to do.
However, the doctor recommended calling an ambulance, with the paramedics asking similar questions as they drove her to Harrogate Hospital, as well as the A&E nurses waiting for her there and a doctor.
At the hospital, she regained her ability to speak and underwent a CT scan, despite protestations that it was instead her migraine.
Ex-Bake Off judge Prue Leith was rushed to hospital after her husband, John Playfair, feared she was having a stroke
She was eventually released in the early hours of the morning after the doctors analysed the scan results and confirmed she had not a stroke.
‘I knew all along that all I had was a migraine. But since the speech problem is a classic symptom of a stroke, and my extreme old age being a time when mini-strokes are common, everyone was determined to be safe not sorry,’ she said.
The terrifying encounter was recounted in the Bake Off judge’s column, Prue’s News, which will appear in the September issue of The Oldie magazine, according to The Sun.
Prue further spoke about her history with migraines, recalling a particularly unpleasant experience with the condition when she was nine that resulted in her speech going ‘bananas’, blurting out ‘I want fish’ rather than saying she was sick.
The national treasured decided to reveal her dramatic visit to A&E in efforts to highlight the important work the NHS does and compliment the staff that she encountered.
Although a patient may have to wait ‘forever’, when you are seen to, it is as if you are ‘the only patient in A&E’, Prue said.
The medics were all ‘cheerful, sympathetic, polite, helpful and professional’ and the nurse who took her blood was ‘bright as a daisy’ after a 10-hour shift covering a colleague who was off sick.
This is a breaking story, more to follow.
