Davina McCall is out of ICU following surgery to remove a benign brain tumour, with her partner Michael Douglas updating the TV star’s many fans of her progress on social media.
“Update folks. Thanks so much to all the well-wishers. She really has made an enormous leap forward in the last 24 hours. She is out of ICU. She is ‘loving awareness’. Thank you,” shared Michael on Monday.
In October, HELLO! chatted with Davina as we named her as one of our Change Makers of 2024 for her incredible work on menopause awareness, and the former Big Brother host shared her daily gratitude mantra with us – one that we imagine she is practising as she recovers from her operation.
Speaking about her achievements, the mum-of-two told us: “I’ve been so blessed in my career to do such a mad variety of TV shows ranging from Big Brother to Long Lost Family. You couldn’t get two more different TV programmes.”
Davina added: “But I tell you what, I have been blessed with all my life, and I think possibly it’s from having such a colourful childhood and upbringing. I am generally massively grateful for every single day that I’m alive.
She continued: “I’m not always like that, not every single day, but generally I wake up and go, ‘Oh, wow it’s another day, great, I’m so pleased to be here and I’m so happy to wake up in a nice, clean bed with clean sheets – because there was a time when it wasn’t like that.
“I’d wake up feeling really ill every day in wet sheets. I’d sweat all night, and then I’d just think, right, where do I get my gear from? So, I am so happy.”
Davina was referring to her years of drug taking in her teens and early twenties before she got clean at age 25 with the help of her then-boyfriend, the singer Eric Clapton. She previously told The Mirror: “I was a mess. You name it, I took it. Cocaine, ecstasy and heroin.”
Davina shocked fans when she revealed she has a benign brain tumour on 15 November.
She said in her video: “Hi so I’m posting this, it will be Friday morning and I’m doing it because a few months ago, I did a menopause talk for a company and they offered me a health scan in return which I thought I was going to ace. But, it turned out I had a benign brain tumour called a colloid cyst which is very rare, three in a million.
“I put my head in the sand for a while, I saw quite a few neurosurgeons, I got lots of opinions, and I realised that I have to get it taken out. It’s big for the space, it fills the space. It’s 14mm wide, and it needs to come out because if it grows it will be bad.
“So I’m having it removed via a craniotomy through the top of my head here, and through the two halves of my brain, through the middle, get the cyst, empty it, take it out, ‘Bob’s your uncle’.”
She continued: “So say a prayer for me. I am in good spirits,” before her partner Michael interjected saying: “I’ve got my eye on her!”
© ShutterstockTalking about her recovery, Davina said: “I’m going to be in hospital for about nine days, and then I’m going to be going home but I am going to be off my phone for a while. So Michael might fill you in and let you guys know how I’m doing. But I don’t want you to worry about me. I’m doing that enough as it is.
“I’m not worrying too much, I am in a good space. I have all the faith in the world in my surgeon and his team and I’m handing the reins over to him, he knows what he’s doing, I’m going to do the getting better bit after. I’ll see you on the other side.”