Escape to the Country star Nicki Chapman has shared the symptoms she dismissed when feeling the effects of a non-cancerous brain tumour that needed urgent surgery
Escape to the Country star Nicki Chapman has warned others not to dismiss health concerns after mistaking signs of tumour on her brain for menopause and a migraine.
The 58-year-old TV host – who served as a judge on iconic singing contests Popstars and Pop Idol alongside Simon Cowell – underwent surgery to remove a brain tumour in 2019. The growth was the size of a golf ball by the time she was operated on – but fortunately the tumour proved not to be cancerous.
Nicki has reflected on her health battle and explained that she did what many others would do – dismissed the signs that something was wrong. When she grew forgetful and confused, she assumed she was overly tired.
And when she got so muddled that she couldn’t remember who she had arrived at work to meet, she dismissed her problems on a migraine. However, the truth was that she was developing a potentially life-threatening.
Opening up to Gabby Logan on The Mid.Point podcast, Nicki explained her initial dismissal of her symptoms. She recalled: “Mine was really really quick, even though the tumour had been there for a long time, it wasn’t until I started to lose my sight, and I got lost walking down the street, and I couldn’t talk, but I sort of kept thinking, oh it’s because I’m tired.”
She said it took a missed work appointment to make her consider that something was wrong as she prides herself on being professional. The former singing judge had been booked to record a voiceover for Escape to the Country – but completely forgot to turn up for the recording session.
Nicki recalled: “I never miss a meeting, they rang me up and said, ‘Where are you?’ and I said, ‘I’m at home’. They’re like, ‘You’re meant to be here’. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, how embarrassing!'” Her concerns then increased when the usual five-minute walk to the studio took her an hour as she couldn’t remember how to get to the destination – and she then forgot who she was supposed to meet when she finally arrived.
Nicki recalled: “Each time I made excuses for my behaviour… So I thought I was having a migraine. Again, I made excuses for [my symptoms] and we’re talking days, we’re not talking months. When I woke up the next morning and I turned on my computer and couldn’t read it, suddenly alarm bells just went off. I was like ‘Shack (her husband) we’ve, got a problem here’.”
Nicki finally decided to seek medical help and after explaining her symptoms to her doctor, she was sent immediately to A&E with concerns she could be suffering a stroke. Nicki recalls: “And then it was like, you actually haven’t had a stroke. You’ve got a brain tumour.”
Doctors performed surgery to remove a non-cancerous tumour from her brain – which could have proved fatal if it had continued to grow and press against her organ. Nicki has since recovered from the surgery and now has a scan every 18 months to monitor her health.
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