Penny Lancaster has admitted that she was surprised with how well her husband, Rod Stewart, dealt with her breakdown amid her horrific battle with menopause and being misdiagnosed with depression.
The 53-year-old revealed that she was only 49 when she first began getting symptoms of menopause and was misdiagnosed with depression – before an intervention was staged by her Loose Women co-stars.
After feeling “numb” from the anti-depressants and still waking up in the night in a pool of sweat, the model and special police constable finally got to the end of her tether and things came to a head.
She told The Times: “I picked up the plates and I threw them across the kitchen. Which is an outrageous thing to think of — who the hell would throw the dinner?
“Of course, it was an absolute shock to Rod and the boys. Rod just went, ‘Boys, in the other room. Leave Mummy.’ He came over and said, ‘It’s all right, darling. It’s OK, it’s OK.’ I was shaking.”
Since her diagnosis, Stewart explained that he “hadn’t seen the menopause before, because my [previous] marriages didn’t last that long”.
Penny noted how well her husband had dealt with her breakdown
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When discussing how menopause can make women suicidal and how she felt when she was finally diagnosed, she added to the same publication: “Yeah! It can make them take their own lives. Women do take their own lives.
“I wasn’t [suicide] bad, but… She [the doctor] said to me: ‘If you’re of a certain age and you tick enough of these boxes on the list of symptoms, you’re there’.”
“I burst into tears because of the good news. That’s what it was. ‘I’m not going mad. I can save my marriage. I can keep my family together.’ I thought everything was falling apart.”
She went on to add that she was surprised with how well Stewart had dealt with it: “I kind of was. He dealt with it very well.”
Whilst she was taken aback by how well he had coped with the rough time in her life, she also admitted that her Maggie May singer husband may have hinted to her about her weight gain when she first started on HRT.
“I put on weight; my husband would say it was a very sensitive subject. He didn’t want to say, ‘Do you really need that second portion?’ or ‘Do you want that whole bowl or do you want to just break off a little square or two?’.
“But he was thinking it. He might have hinted. My friends say I’ve got my sparkle back.”
Their relationship didn’t start when Stewart first wanted it to, and he previously told PEOPLE magazine in 2021: “Rachel broke up with me on a Monday evening, and it was heartbreaking. No one leaves Rod!
Rod recently spoke of how her had to wait 6 months before getting Penny’s number
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“But that Saturday night, I met Penny at the Dorchester Hotel in London. The bass player in my band, Carmine, said, ‘Listen, you’ve just come out of a long nine-year marriage. You’re not ready yet’.
“I nearly strangled him! Six months later, he gave me her phone number and she came over. She has mended my heart in more ways than one.”