Dame Prue Leith has issued a health update after being rushed to hospital over a suspected stroke scare. The former Great British Bake Off star, 86, was left temporarily unable to speak during a recent health episode, which led her husband John Playfair to believe she was experiencing a stroke.
Migraine attack confirmed
The television personality later confirmed she had suffered a migraine attack during which her vision significantly deteriorated. Despite recognising the symptoms as those of a migraine and informing her husband accordingly, he remained deeply concerned and called for an ambulance. She was taken to Harrogate Hospital, where she received treatment in the Accident and Emergency department.
Turning to Instagram to reassure her followers, Dame Prue said: "For those that have messaged me, I wrote a piece for @theoldiemagazine about my trip to the hospital a couple of months ago. I was fine shortly after, and I am very much alive and kicking now!"
Recounting the episode
In her column, Dame Prue wrote: "A few weeks ago, staying in Yorkshire, I had a migraine attack. It followed a familiar path. First, I can see only half of whatever I'm looking at. This is speedily followed by a bright circle of flickering, coloured lights in the upper right field of vision. I don't swiftly swallow one of my migraine 'bombs' (three pills: paracetamol, ibuprofen and sumatriptan), a crashing headache will follow."
She went on to add: "This time, my incomprehensible jumble of disconnected words convinced John I was having a stroke. I tried to tell him it was just a migraine, but I couldn't string two words together."
Hospital treatment and discharge
Prue then revealed that despite being able to raise her right arm and showing no facial drooping — both key indicators used when checking for a stroke — the operator John spoke to made the decision to dispatch an ambulance, and she shortly found herself at Harrogate Hospital.
The television personality then described what followed as a six-hour wait in A&E, and after eventually undergoing a CT scan at midnight, she was discharged at two o'clock in the morning.
She rounded off her column by noting that while she "knew all along" that she was experiencing a migraine, given that loss of speech is a significant symptom of a stroke, it was better "safe than sorry" on this occasion.
First migraine at age nine
Prue, who served as a judge on Bake Off for nearly a decade before announcing her exit earlier this year, also recalled suffering her very first migraine at just nine years old. She recounted that, at the time, her speech went "bananas" and she suddenly blurted out: "I want fish!"
