Fern’s brush with death

Fern Britton opens up about the secret health battle which left her ‘fighting for life’…

Presenter Fern Britton has revealed for the first time how she endured a harrowing health battle last year, which left her ‘resigned to dying’. Her brush with death came after she was admitted to hospital for a routine hysterectomy. Fern, 59, revealed she contracted sepsis, which kills 44,000 people in the UK every year. ‘This time last year, I was fighting for my life,’ the former This Morning hostturnedauthor said. Sepsis is a rare but serious complication of an infection. Without treatment, it can lead to multiple organ failure and death.

Her hysterectomy – which she needed because of fibroids – was successful, but nothing could have prepared the mumof-four for the ordeal that lay ahead. She was discharged from hospital, but three days later was in such agonising pain she was unable to walk.

‘I was shivering, and my muscles and joints were hurting,’ she explained. ‘The pain was so acute that I was having muscle contractions in my abdomen.’

As her symptoms worsened, Fern’s husband, TV chef Phil Vickery, called an ambulance, and on being admitted to hospital, she was diagnosed with an E.coli infection and several abscesses that required an emergency operation – a prospect that understandably left the TV star terrified.

‘On the night of the procedure, I was resigned to dying. The theatre nurse offered to put a plaster over my wedding ring. Instead, I took it off and gave it to my daughter – because I hated the thought of them taking it from my dead body to give to her,’ she confessed.

Fortunately, Fern survived the procedure but, in her own words, ‘the battle wasn’t over’. In fact, a day later, she developed pneumonia and her lung collapsed.

But, thanks to ‘the incredible NHS team’, Fern managed to pull through – although the ordeal is still on her mind 12 months later.

‘Sepsis feels like being run over by a bus and, even a year later, I’m still recovering,’ she explained.

‘Make no mistake, sepsis is deadly but can be beaten if treated quickly. The pain and sense of losing the fight was very strong.’

We wish you all the best for a full recovery, Fern.

‘I hated the thought of someone taking my wedding ring from my dead body…’

The presenter said she felt like she’d been ‘run over by a bus’ Fern was full of praise for the ‘incredible NHS team’ that saved her Her TV chef hubby Phil Vickery had to call an ambulance