The TV personality and Big Brother legend, 57, spoke about her memory loss following brain surgery.
Following her brain surgery, Davina McCall had a terrifying experience. During a rare 14-mm colloid cyst that only three out of every million people are affected, the TV star was found out during a rare health check in 2023.
Thankfully, the tumour was benign, and in 2024, Davina had neurosurgeon Kevin O’Neill successfully remove it. But in a new episode of her podcast, Begin Again, she revealed just how much it affected her memory and perception of everything around her.
In a conversation with Heart Radio DJ, Jamie Theakston, she said: “Can I tell you a weird thing? I understand a bit about [symptoms of dementia] because I woke up with no short-term memory, and it’s come back very, very slowly over three months. And I struggled with all of those feelings when I was just out of hospital.”
Davina responded, “Yeah, it was,” when Jamie asked, “Like an Alzheimer’s.” I became terrified. I became, well, insecure. I had no faith in the people I care about. Even though it was awful, I could sense it returning. Rather than losing it.
It revealed to me a brand-new fact: My father, of course, passed away from Alzheimer’s, you see. It’s extraordinary, and what it really feels like it feels like it also helped me to appreciate what he’d been through and what your dad is going through right now.
Alzheimer’s disease gradually decreases memory, cognitive abilities, and ultimately the ability to perform basic tasks. More than 944, 000 people in the UK are currently affected by this dementia, which is the most prevalent type of dementia.
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Six years after being given the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, Davina’s father passed away from dementia in 2022. Prior to this, Davina, 57, claimed that he had always been her rock and that she had occasionally felt a little hero-worshipped by him.
Speaking with the Alzheimer’s Society in 2017 before he passed away, she said: “I’ve always slightly hero-worshipped him. So when he started saying funny things like, ‘I took the overland train’ and ‘Call me when your work is less explosive’, it didn’t take us long to all come together and ask each other if we should be concerned.
He is so clever that he had come up with strategies, despite the fact that the psychologist who initially assessed him said he might have had a few days of trouble. That’s my dad; identify a problem and devise a plan. She continued, “I grieved the loss of my grandfather.”
After having brain surgery, Davina also lost a worrying four kilograms of muscle. She now feels much stronger in both her body and mind, despite a difficult recovery journey.
“I felt like my memory was coming back and I was feeling stronger in myself, in my mind,” she recently told Women’s Health. “But working on my body was going to be the last bit of joy to come back to my life.”
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early dementia warning signs
Different types of dementia can have a variety of effects on people. Occasionally, though, a few typical red flags show up when it first starts.
According to the NHS, these are:
- Finding it difficult to carry out well-known daily tasks, such as stumbling over the appropriate change to purchase at the grocery store.
- Memory loss
- Contemplation is challenging.
- confusion regarding place and time
- mood alters
- Finding it difficult to follow a conversation or to use the appropriate phrase
Source: Mirror
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