I met the love of my life at airport in Morocco
CHERYL thought she had been in love before. But when she came face to face with her now husband the first time, she realised how wrong she had been.
For the man she met in the busy arrivals lounge of Agadir airport, was not the stranger she had feared meeting after months of talking online. He was The One.
Cheryl first met Yassine El-jamouni in 2010. He was 21 years her junior and lived in a rural area of Morocco. But they got on well and after a few months of exchanging old-fashioned letters, Cheryl flew out to see him in the flesh.
“My suitcase fell over, a hand came out to pick it up,” recalls Cheryl. “I locked eyes with this man. It was then I thought, ‘I am going to marry you’. I’d waited all my life for that ‘ping’ feeling.
“I’d been married before, had relationships before, thought I was in love before but I’d never felt like that.
“We got in the taxi, he held my hand. It was soulmate stuff.”
EASTENDERS star Cheryl Fergison has been secretly selfharming for eight years as she became obsessed with the thought her cancer would return.
The actress, who played the beloved Heather Trott, began scalding herself daily to “wash away” any leftover cancer cells, only to cause herself unbearable pain and more physical damage.
She now wants to speak openly about her psychological ordeal in the hope she can help others suffering from mental health side-effects after a serious illness.
It comes after Heather yesterday told the Irish Daily Mirror about her cancer of the womb and hysterectomy.
Now in Day Two of our exclusive, Cheryl, 58, reveals how that was just the beginning of her ordeal.
After finishing her cancer treatment in 2015, doctors were hopeful she would have the official all-clear by 2020.
However the actress claims that medics suggested she monitor any unusual symptoms, in case there were any “cells” left.
It was routine advice, but it triggered a deep-rooted fear – and obsession.
“In my head, I thought I still had
It was like an addiction.. I told nobody but my husband and he tried to stop me EASTENDERS STAR CHERYL FERGISON SELF HARMED BY SCALDING HERSELF
cancer cells in me,” she says. “Doctors had talked about having done a ‘washing’ procedure as part of the surgery so I thought right, ‘I’ll wash myself, I’ll wash these cells away’.
“So every day, sometimes twice a day, I would get a shower head and get the water at its hottest setting – as much as I could bear.”
She would then target the same area as the doctors had in their operation, in the hope of recreating their “washing” procedure.
“It was like an addiction,” reveals Cheryl. “I was doing this for years. It became a routine. I told nobody except my husband Yass and he would try to stop me. He was so supportive – but it was in my head.”
What Cheryl was doing was a form of self-harm and a compulsion driven by her fear of another cancer ordeal.
But soon she was in physical pain as well as mental.
Burned and sore, her skin would bleed, smear tests became too painful to bear, and it was difficult being intimate with Yassine El-jamouni, 37, her husband of 12 years.
She also now has a partial bladder prolapse,which she believes is a result of her actions.
“I just thought, ‘This is what I have to do’,” Cheryl says. “I’d try to wean myself off but I’d always do it again.
“You go through a threshold of pain – now if I had to do fire-eating for a living it wouldn’t be a problem.” The
self-harm stopped only last year when, terrified that further backache was a signal that the cancer had returned, she consulted doctors.
“They looked at my notes and it turned out the initial treatment had got all the cancer,” recalls Cheryl.
“The day after I got that news
I