Prue Leith has revealed she was hospitalised in recent weeks after a sudden deterioration in her sight and speech. The Great British Bake Off star was in Yorkshire with her husband John Playfair when he called ambulance services, as her speech had become an 'incomprehensible jumble of disconnected words'.
Migraine attack mistaken for stroke
The 86-year-old wrote in a new column that her husband feared she was having a stroke, but it was in fact what she described as a 'migraine attack'. Leith said it 'followed a familiar path', as she has suffered from bouts since childhood. It first constricted her vision to half of whatever she was looking at and then created 'a bright circle of flickering, coloured lights' in her vision.
Writing in her column in the September issue of The Oldie magazine, Leith said she typically takes a cocktail of paracetamol, ibuprofen and sumatriptan to stave off the headaches. However, her husband feared the worst, as she wrote: 'I tried to tell him it was just a migraine, but I couldn't string two words together.'
Hospital visit and CT scan
Leith said she faced a six-hour wait in the hospital to see a doctor, by which point she had recovered her speech faculties. After undergoing a CT scan as a precaution, given that people her age are prone to mini-strokes, the cooking star said she was finally out of the hospital at 2am.
She added: '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.'
Praise for NHS staff
The Bake Off star recalled how she suffered her first migraine aged nine, when her speech went 'bananas'. She tried to communicate that she felt sick, but instead blurted out, 'I want fish.' She went on to sing the praises of the NHS staff who tended to her on the night in Harrogate Hospital, describing how a nursing assistant even found her a ham sandwich.
'The NHS personnel are all cheerful, sympathetic, polite, helpful and professional. You may have to wait forever, but when it is your turn, you are treated as if you were the only patient in A&E,' she wrote.
