How I battled my way back to fitness, by superbug victim Leslie
DIAGNOSED with a deadly strain of the superbug MRSA, medics feared actress Leslie Ash might not survive – let alone walk again.
But a decade on, the 55-year-old is finally free of medication and can at last get around without the aid of a stick. Speaking for the first time about her hellish ten years yesterday, she described the long road to recovery after the infection left her with permanent spinal injuries.
And the Men Behaving Badly star hopes that her new strength will allow her to rebuild a career that included a role in the classic film Quadrophenia.
She said: ‘It’s taken me ten years to come off all the medication and I feel a lot more awake and I am so much better. I have still got the stick – but I can actually walk around without it now for the first time ever – and I work out a lot.’
She puts her recovery down to the help of a sports coach who created a tailored exercise regime designed to build up her strength, although there are remaining problems with her balance. The actress was taken to hospital in 2004 with two broken ribs and a punctured lung after falling out of bed during ‘energetic sex’ with her husband, ex-footballer Lee Chapman, 55.
But her condition took a turn for the worse when she contracted superbug MSSA, a strain of MRSA. Her family were warned she might not survive – and even when she did pull through she was initially confined to a wheelchair. Miss Ash’s health problems first hit the headlines in 2002 when a lip filler procedure went wrong, leaving her with a ‘trout pout’. The effects look markedly less noticeable in the photographs from this week.
Although she now helps to run a string of bars and diners in London, the mother of two says she is ready to get back into acting. She had a part in TV drama Holby City in 2010 and appeared in Celebrity MasterChef last year, but admitted she ‘set the bar too high’ for a challenging 2012 theatre tour. But with returning strength and a new agent, she’s ready for more stage work.
Speaking at the London Club & Bar Awards on Monday, she added: ‘I would like to do a Men Behaving Badly special, but I don’t think it will happen.’