Prue Leith recently found herself facing a health scare, prompting a rush to the hospital amid fears of a potential stroke.
During a visit to picturesque Yorkshire, England, the 86-year-old culinary icon was struck by what she described as a “migraine attack.” Leith shared her unsettling experience in her column “Prue’s News” for the September issue of The Oldie, with snippets revealed by The Sun ahead of its release on Friday, August 14.
The former judge of the beloved Great British Baking Show felt initially assured it was just another migraine episode, a condition she is all too familiar with. However, alarm bells rang for her husband, John Playfair, who dialed emergency services when her language became an “incomprehensible jumble of disconnected words.”
“The episode followed a predictable pattern,” Leith explained. “Initially, my vision was halved, obscuring whatever I looked at. This was swiftly followed by a vivid, flickering halo of colored lights in the upper right corner of my visual field.”
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She noted that usually if she doesn’t “swiftly swallow one of my migraine ‘bombs,’ (paracetamol, ibuprofen and sumatriptan) a crashing headache will follow.”
Leith explained that her husband, however, was convinced she was “having a stroke” when she started to speak in “disconnected words.”
“I tried to tell him it was just a migraine, but I couldn’t string two words together,” she recalled, noting that’s when Playfair called their doctor.
Prue Leith. Antony Jones/Getty Images for Pimm’s
Leith remembered telling the doctor that she could raise her arms and make a fist, insisting nothing hurt and her face wasn’t drooping. The doctor, however, still called an ambulance to take her to the hospital.
“The ambulance man asked me the same questions, as did a nurse on arrival at A&E, and so, after a six-hour wait, did the doctor,” she wrote.
The celebrity chef said she assured the doctor at the hospital that it was a migraine after recovering “coherent speech” by the time they met.
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The doctor decided to do a CT scan as an extra precaution.
“Two hours later, I had one, waited another hour for the results, and was released at 2 a.m.,” Leith shared. “[The doctor later] explained why he wanted to refer me for a brain scan, just to be sure (people of my age, 86, are prone to mini-strokes).”
Leith, who revealed she had her first migraine at 9 years old, said, “I knew all along that all I had was a migraine.”
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She explained, “But since the speech problem is a classic symptom of a stroke, and my extreme old age being a time when mini-strokes are common, everyone was determined to be safe not sorry.”
Leigh added that she wasn’t upset over her long stay at the hospital, thanking the National Health Service (NHS) personnel for being “cheerful, sympathetic, polite, helpful and professional.”
“You may have to wait forever, but when it is your turn, you are treated as if you were the only patient in A&E,” she concluded.