Davina McCall has opened up about how her short-term memory loss affected her relationship.
Last November, the former Big Brother host underwent major surgery to remove a benign colloid cyst from her brain, which she described as a “three in a million" rare tumour. Davina’s operation was successful, and she has since been given the all-clear.
Almost a year on from her surgery, Davina has now recalled how she was impacted by short-term memory loss.
Speaking on Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast, the 57-year-old shared that her partner Michael Douglas struggled with her memory issues.
“Michael, who spent the majority of the time with me, I've never seen him struggle with spending time with me, but sometimes... he was telling me, sometimes I'd ask him the same thing seven times in half an hour,” Davina admitted, noting that he would “have to leave the room for a bit”.
“I had long-term memory. I could remember... and I thought, ‘Oh, he doesn't want to be with me.’ But in the end, we had a chat and he said, ‘What are you talking about? I love you, of course I want to be with you,’” she gushed.
“He said, ‘You're actually just a bit annoying at the moment.’ And I laughed so hard with relief. I was so relieved to find out that it was a thing that will get better,” she joked.
“I knew I was still in there. And sometimes I just wanted to shout, ‘Please remember me. I'm still here. I'm trying to get back to you but I don't know how to do it. Wait for me. I promise you, I'm not going to be this annoying forever,’” Davina continued.
Describing her six-month recovery as “difficult”, she stated: “I just thought life would go back to normal quite quickly, and I didn't go back to normal. I didn't understand, and people had said your short-term memory might be affected, but I just didn't really get what that meant.”
Davina added: “I just thought I wouldn't remember what I'd just done. But I wasn't aware that my memory was so bad.”
