01 March 2024 , 18:58
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Susannah Constantine has given a health update after she revealed she was "lucky to be alive".
The TV star, 61, shot to fame in the 200s when she starred in the popular self-help show What Not To Wear alongside Trinny Woodall, 60. She was recently rushed to hospital with a life-threatening illness and was told she was at risk of being left paralysed or of suffering a brain haemorrhage. Susannah raised the medical alarm after she suffered pins and needles, tinnitus, and a swollen left eye.
The presenter was told surgery was necessary however it risked sparking another health issue. Susannah has also experienced hearing issues, admitting she has "damaged" her ears. She said: "The penny dropped when I realised I couldn’t differentiate between the different birds singing.
"I live in the countryside and it’s something I love to listen to, because I wake up in the morning, every morning, filled with anxiety, and I go outside and I listen to the bird song," she told The Sun. Speaking to The Mirror last year, Susannah told us: "Ambient noise is awful. I wasn’t able to hear the person sitting next to me. I’d become an amateur lip reader, but if I couldn’t see someone’s face, I had no idea what they were saying. It was embarrassing.”
Susannah was rushed to hospital last year (@susannahconstantine/Instagram)
The TV presenter has opened up on her health struggles (@susannahconstantine/Instagram)Susannah now wears a hearing aid but admitted she felt ashamed to need one. She told us: “I won’t lie, I did feel ashamed in a way. There are lots of young kids who have hearing disorders, which is obviously completely different. For me, it’s always been one of the greatest physical signs of ageing, like wrinkles and dentures. There can be a huge stigma around wearing hearing aids, I felt like I might as well go to the funeral director and order my coffin, it made me feel so old.” Initially, Susannah believed the test had gone well. “I thought, ‘I’ve nailed that – I’m not deaf ’, but of course, there were pitches that I hadn’t heard.”
Trinny and Susannah's painful 'divorce' after humiliating fail sparked rift
Susannah was rushed to hospital last year and informed her followers by sharing a photo of her arm with an IV needle injected into it. She wrote online at the time: “Withered arm turned out to be a symptom of something a bit more serious. All sorted now thanks to our ailing but still magnificent NHS where we are lucky enough to have some of the most gifted doctors (and in this case neurosurgeons) in the world. @brainandspine. Forever grateful."
She recently told OK! magazine: "They said 'It's Hobson's Choice, if you don't have the operation, you've got a one in three chance of having a brain haemorrhage, being paralysed or having a stroke. If you do have surgery, you've got a one in 10 chance of these same things happening during the operation'."