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 sons.
In a candid interview, the former model, 53, spoke about how menopause ‘hit her like a truck’ four years ago, leading her to have several ‘breakdowns’.
Penny said it was so bad she was worried if her marriage would survive, and after being misdiagnosed with depression, it was her team at Loose Women who staged an intervention.
hen she first started experiencing symptoms, Penny and Sir Rod, 79, alongside their two sons Alistair, 18, and Aiden, 13, had just decamped their home in Florida and moved back to the UK during lockdown.
Speaking of the moment Rod told her “You can’t carry on the like this”, Penny told The Times: ‘I picked up the plates and I threw them across the kitchen. Which is an outrageous thing to think of — who the hell would throw the dinner?
‘I threw these plates of food across the kitchen as hard as I could, to make as much noise as I could. As if the noise… as if someone would wake up, someone would notice me, someone would have the answer.
‘I collapsed on the floor in a heap, burst into tears, shaking in the corner. Of course, it was an absolute shock to Rod and the boys. Rod just went, “Boys, in the other room. Leave Mummy.”
‘He came over and said, “It’s all right, darling. It’s OK, it’s OK.”I was shaking. “I can’t do this. What the hell is going on with me?” I thought I was going mad. Rod said, “Right, we’ve got to get you to the doctor’s. You can’t carry on like this. There’s got to be an answer. There’s got to be something.”
Luckily, Penny revealed the plates didn’t hit anyone but they had to redecorate the kitchen.
Penny was experiencing an unusual discomfort at night which she described similar to feeling a ‘rising inferno’ or ‘standing in a pit of fire’.
She easily went from feeling her blood boil to wake up freezing cold at night not knowing what was happening to her, and at the time led her to assume it was Covid-19.
Penny used to retreat into the garden where the chickens were to cope with the debilitating anxiety she was battling as a result of the changes to her body.
When the model finally had the chance to see her GP – who was a male – he saw her bursting into tears and diagnosed her with depression, and prescribed some antidepressants.
Such medicines only worsened Penny’s state of mind as she felt ‘terrified but also numb’.
The star explained she couldn’t feel either happy or sad, and the antidepressants simply contributed to make her feel like she ‘didn’t care’ about her own condition, despite feeling all the same symptoms.
But then it was the Loose Women team who alerted Penny she might have been going through menopause instead.
After having a chat on Zoom, the daytime show panel raised it could have easily been hormonal withdrawal despite her thinking she wasn’t ‘old enough’.
And once they returned to the studio, they were finally able to see Penny in person and ultimately ‘realised what was happening’.
The TV alum praised them and said their ‘combined power’ saved her thanks for all their previous experiences.
They informed her about Dr Louise Newson, an increasingly celebrated menopause specialist who ‘holds back an emergency slot every day in her surgery for suicidal women’.
Penny joined the doctor on one of her emergency slots and was diagnosed over a Zoom call.
She burst into tears that it luckily wasn’t ‘mental illness’ – as all she could think about was saving her marriage and ‘keep her family from falling apart’.
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
