Rod Stewart’s wife Penny Lancaster has opened up on the horrific ordeal she endured before her menopause diagnosis and even admitted to throwing “plates of food” across her kitchen as a coping mechanism.
The special police constable was 49 years old when she began getting symptoms of menopause, and it wasn’t long after she, Stewart and their sons – Alastair and Aiden – had moved to Florida.
Lancaster had received some advice from her Loose Women friends that it might have been the entirely natural health battle but thought she was too young to be diagnosed.
She went to see the doctor about her issues and was given some anti-depressants, but admitted that it quickly made her feel “numb” and wasn’t sure the diagnosis was correct.
Things all came to a head one night when she was cooking dinner for her family and became frustrated when he sons wouldn’t come down for dinner after calling them multiple times.
“The two boys and Rod. And 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?
“But the physical act [was hard to stop]… Because I couldn’t contain it any more. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t want to hurt myself. But I felt like it was getting to that point.
“Hurting myself. Hurting someone. I threw these plates of food across the kitchen as hard as I could, to make as much noise as I could. As if the noise… as if someone would wake up, someone would notice me, someone would have the answer,” she told The Times.
She revealed that luckily no one was hurt and they only had to do a bit of redecorating in the kitchen, before she added the moments after the incident left her in a heap on the floor, in tears.
“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.
Penny and Rod recently celebrated their wedding anniversary
“I can’t do this. What the hell is going on with me?’ I thought I was going mad. Rod said, ‘Right, we’ve got to get you to the doctor’s. You can’t carry on like this. There’s got to be an answer. There’s got to be something.”
When discussing how the anti-depressants made her feel, she added that despite trying, she “couldn’t feel happy” and didn’t care about anything or anyone around her.
“Didn’t care about anything that was happening.”
Lancaster’s update comes just days after the couple celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary, with their son Alastair’s girlfriend, Eloise Darlington, posting a now-deleted image of the couple.
Penny noted how she threw plates of dinner across the kitchen
GETTY
Stewart was crouched behind his wife, who was seated in a chair, with the caption reading: “Celebrating 17 years of love.”
The Maggie May singer Stewart reposted the image and noted: “25 years together and no red flags.” (sic)