Davina McCall has said that her brain tumour diagnosis left her "so angry".
The presenter spoke about this with Steven Bartlett on her own podcast, Begin Again, having been diagnosed with a brain tumour back in November, after a colloid cyst was found following a health check up, as part of her menopause advocacy work.
Having spent some time in intensive care, Davina McCall had surgery to remove the tumour, before recovering at home, while being cared for by her partner, celebrity hairdresser Michael Douglas.
Speaking to Bartlett, Davina McCall said that her scan showed up an uncommon type of tumour, one which can "very very rarely" cause "sudden death".
Davina McCall also told Bartlett that she felt her tumour "had taken control of me and I was so angry about that".
Speaking to Bartlett, former Big Brother host Davina McCall added: "I felt like this thing had taken control of me and I was so angry about that. I couldn't… I couldn’t let it go. (I thought) 'How dare you control my daily life like this and make me feel every day like I’m in danger?’.
"I have newfound enormous sympathy for people who have benign brain tumours. Because you think… I have had so many people say to me: ‘Well, at least it was benign.’ And you think: ‘You have no idea that benign brain tumours can still kill you.’
"It’s just, you don’t know when it’s going to happen. It could happen tomorrow, it could happen in years’ time. It’s different to cancer, but it is also awful. A benign does not mean fine", she added. "Living with that uncertainty is pretty terrifying. I know enough now to know that, look, I am healthy. I look after myself. I exercise".
"I’ve got all of these things going for me, but stress is a killer. And I want to de-stress my life. I do not want to live with the stress of thinking any minute, you know, I could be taken out by something".
The presenter also added that she "seriously believes wholeheartedly that somewhere in my genetic makeup, this was in my stars from birth, in my brain at birth", but insisted that she never thought it was "unfair".
Elsewhere, Davina McCall has stated that the experience has "not changed me forever, but I’ve learned things about myself that I would never have learned without this operation", and added that she thinks in two years’ time she will view it as "one of the greatest blessings of my life".
She was also warned by doctors about "stroke, epilepsy" and "nicking an artery or a blood vessel in the brain and having a bleed" being a risk during surgery.
McCall also added that she named her tumour "Jeffrey", as she does not have friends of that name. She also insisted that she did not "want sympathy" or people to "carry the burden" of her ordeal.
"I did go and address my will and make sure that was airtight. I talked to Michael about my wishes. I wrote letters of wishes to all the children, and put those in my will", she revealed.
On her children, McCall explained that she wanted to prepare them for the worst case scenario.
"It was funny with Chester because he’s the youngest. He’s 18. And it was only when I came home, he was like: ‘I didn’t realise how serious it was.’ I said: ‘Well, I’m pleased, you know, because look, here I am and it all went well and it was fine", she said.
"But in a way, there was part of me that was thinking: ‘If it hadn’t been fine, he would have struggled the most".
Back in November, Davina McCall revealed the good news that she was "on the mend" following her surgery. More on this story here.
