Penny Lancaster has recalled the moment her husband Rod Stewart urged her to seek medical help after she threw plates across the kitchen in front of their two children.
In a candid interview, the former model, 53, spoke about how menopause “hit her like a truck” four years ago, leading her to suffer several “crises.”
Penny said it was so bad she worried whether her marriage would survive and, after she was wrongly diagnosed with depression, it was her Loose Women team who organized an intervention.
When she started experiencing symptoms, Penny and Sir Rod, 79, along with their two sons Alistair, 18, and Aiden, 13, had just left their home in Florida and returned to the UK during lockdown.
Speaking of the moment Rod told her: “You can’t go on like this,” Penny said. The times: ‘I picked up the plates and threw them to the other side of the kitchen. Which is scandalous: who the hell would host the dinner?
Penny Lancaster recalled the moment her husband Rod Stewart urged her to seek medical help after she threw plates across the kitchen in front of their two children (pictured last year).
In a candid interview, the former model, 53, spoke about how menopause “hit her like a truck” just four years ago, leading her to suffer several “crises.”
Penny and Sir Rod, 79, along with their two sons Alistair, 18, and Aiden, 13, left their home in Florida and returned to the UK during lockdown, when she began experiencing symptoms.
‘I threw these plates of food across the kitchen as hard as I could, to make as much noise as possible. As if the noise… as if someone woke up, someone noticed me, someone had the answer.
“I collapsed on the floor, burst into tears and trembled in a corner. Of course, it was an absolute shock to Rod and the boys. Rod simply said, “Guys, in the other room. Leave mom.”
“He came over and said, ‘It’s okay, honey. It’s okay, it’s okay.” I was shaking. “I can’t do this. What the hell is going on with me?” I thought I was going crazy. Rod said, “Okay, we have to get you to the doctor. You can not continue that way. There has to be an answer. There has to be something”.
Luckily, Penny revealed that the dishes didn’t hit anyone but they had to redecorate the kitchen.
Penny was experiencing unusual discomfort at night that she said was similar to feeling a “growing hell” or “standing in a pit of fire.”
It easily went from feeling like her blood was boiling to waking up frozen at night not knowing what was happening to her, leading her at that point to assume it was Covid-19.
Penny often retreated to the garden where the chickens were kept to cope with the debilitating anxiety she was struggling with as a result of the changes in her body.
When the model finally had the chance to see her family doctor, who was a man, he saw her burst into tears and diagnosed her with depression and prescribed her some antidepressants.
Such medications only worsened Penny’s mental state, as she felt “terrified but also numb.”
She had no qualms about admitting that those moments made her ‘throw dishes around the kitchen’, but luckily, her fellow Loose Women panelist had definitely intervened (pictured from September 2021 on Loose Women).
But then it was the Loose Women team who came to their rescue and once they returned to the studio, the panel finally got to see Penny in person and they finally “realised what was happening” (pictured, LR Andrea McLean , Penny, Carol McGiffin and Nadia). Sawalha)
After being diagnosed with menopause, Penny burst into happy tears because all she could think about was saving her marriage and “stopping her family from falling apart” (pictured with Rod in June 2023).
The star explained that she couldn’t feel happy or sad, and that the antidepressants simply contributed to making her feel like she “didn’t care” about her own condition, despite feeling the same symptoms.
But then it was the Loose Women team who alerted Penny that she might have been going through menopause.
After chatting on Zoom, the daytime show panel posited that it could easily have been hormonal withdrawal even though she thought she wasn’t “old enough.”
And once they got back to the studio, they finally got to see Penny in person and finally “realized what was going on.”
The TV alum praised them and said their “combined power” thanked her for all her previous experiences.
She was told about Dr. Louise Newson, an increasingly famous menopause specialist who “every day reserves an emergency slot in her practice for suicidal women.”
Penny joined the doctor in one of his emergency spaces and was diagnosed over a Zoom call.
She burst into tears because luckily it wasn’t a “mental illness” as all she could think about was saving her marriage and “keeping her family from falling apart.”