Loose Women star reveals she was ’24 hours from death’ as she opens up on terrifying hospital dash
LOOSE Women legend Andrea McLean has revealed she was just hours from death after battling a life-threatening illness.
The 55-year-old TV star was rushed to hospital earlier this year where she was diagnosed with pneumonia and sepsis.
She told the Mirror: “I didn’t realise how severe my illness was at the time. But the doctors had told my husband, Nick, that had I not got to hospital when I did, had we waited another 24 hours to call for help, I may not be here now.”
Andrea collapsed to the floor in her bathroom prompting a desperate call to paramedics who had to stabilise her dangerously low blood pressure.
She continued: “Our bedroom is in the loft and they couldn’t get the stretcher around the tight bend, but eventually I managed to slide down the stairs, and was rushed to hospital. What happened over the next few weeks changed my life forever.”
Sepsis is a life-threatening condition which occurs when the body has an extreme reaction to an infection.
Andrea revealed her body had been weakened after contracting Covid three times as well as struggling with Long Covid and a nasty bout of flu in December.
The former Loose Women anchor previously told her Substack readers in February how she “lay there for an hour before my husband [Nick Feeney] found me.”
Andrea added: “I can’t remember much about A&E other than it was thorough. Questions, scans, lots of needles, and possibly the most painful insertion of a catheter ever experienced.
“Then my X-ray and CT scans came back. I had severe pneumonia, Acute Kidney Injury and sepsis. Things happened quickly; drips, super-strong antibiotics via IV and orally, and I was transferred to the Emergency Assessment Ward.”
Andrea detailed her two days and two nights in the ward, which saw her in a “sensory overload with the screams, shouting and sound and smell of poo from people losing control of their bowels.”
She also told how dementia patients in the ward also approached her bed in a restless night with little sleep.
After medics informed her she had lost 80 per cent capacity in one of her lungs, she was put on morphine.
Her businessman tycoon husband Nick visited twice a day to bring meals along with her daughter and parents.
After struggling to get any rest on the ward, the doctors came up with a compromise which saw her head home to sleep – but visit the hospital for her drips.
Andrea said her life was still being impacted by the scary ordeal.
She admitted: “It’s now February, and I’m still not well enough to handle normal stuff like getting up and rushing out the door to do the jobs I’d been booked to do, because every part of that process would end with me falling down, or at the very least sitting on a tube station floor feeling very unwell and embarrassed at the stares.
“I’m still having ‘funny turns’ while out for a walk, or attempting the mildest of exercise.”
She concluded: “It means I haven’t really started 2025 yet.”
Who gets sepsis and what causes it?
Sepsis can affect anyone. The condition occurs when the body’s immune system has an overeaction to an infection.
As a result, the body attacks itself.
Some people are more likely to get an infection that could lead to sepsis, however.
This includes babies under the age of one, people over 75 years old, people with diabetes or a weak immune system (either due to treatment, a condition or genetically), people who have recently had surgery or given birth.
Any infection can lead to sepsis. But those more likely to are those of:
- Lungs, such as pneumonia.
- Kidney, bladder and other parts of the urinary system
- Digestive system
- Bloodstream
- Catheter sites
- Wounds or burns
HEALTH WOES
Back in 2023, she sparked health fears after she admitted she had been ill for three months.
At the time, she took to her Instagram page to post a selfie with her husband after admitting her “absolute exhaustion.”
Five years earlier she told how she was “too scared to go to the doctors” after being diagnosed with life-threatening vasculitis.
All this came before the Scottish broadcaster showed off the results of her lipo procedure which left her bedbound.
Meanwhile, Andrea quit her Loose Women role in November 2020.
She revealed she had made the difficult decision so that she could focus on her website and brand, This Girl is on Fire.
The website is a lifestyle site that is designed to inspire women.
