Davina McCall has pleaded with fans to pray after she was diagnosed with a brain tumour. The Big Brother and Masked Singer star underwent a chance health check which she thought she’d “ace” only to learn she had a large tumour.
The presenter, who has a string of other shows under her belt including Long Lost Family, Got to Dance and The Million Pound Drop, told followers on her Instagram that she was undergoing brain surgery to remove the benign tumour on Friday and would then face a period of recovery. And she asked followers to pray for her and promised boyfriend Michael Douglas would update them on her progress saying she would be “off grid for a while”.
Davina’s video was accompanied by a post from Michael in which he said: “Hey everyone. Michael here. @davinamccall will be “off grid” for a bit while she recovers from this brain operation.
“She is in great shape and in very good hands. I’ll I do the odd update from her account here for anyone interested. I’m sure she’ll read all the comments when she’s able to so feel free to send love. The support of people is amazingly powerful. Have a great day everyone. Michael xxx”
Speaking in the Instagram post Davina said: “She said: “A few months ago, I did a menopause talk for a company and they offered me a health scan in return, which I thought I was gonna ace, but it turned out I had a benign brain tumour called a colloid cyst which is very rare. Three in a million and so I slightly put my head in the sand for a while.
“I saw quite a few neurosurgeons, I got lots of opinions and I realised that I have to get it taken out. It’s big for the space. It fills the space. It’s 14mm wide and it needs to come out, because if it grows, it would be bad. So I’m having it removed via a craniotomy.”
Pointing to the top of her head, she explained: “They go through the top of my head here and through the two halves of my brain to the middle, and get the cyst, take it out, empty it, take it out, Bob’s your uncle.”
She added: “So say a prayer for me. I am in good spirits.” Michael then joined her on the video, saying he’s “letting people know I will have my eye on her”. He jokingly said he “offered to do the operation”, making his partner laughing out loud as he added “she’s in very good hands”.
Davina added: “I’m OK. Been up and down obviously, we’ve been though a lot.” She said she would be in hospital for about nine days and then would be returning home but would be off her phone for a while and Michael would give updates and let people know how she was doing.
She laughed as she told fans: “I don’t want you to worry about me – I’m doing that enough as it is. But I’m not worrying too much. I’m in a good space and I have all the faith in the world in my surgeon and his team and I am handing the reins over to him. He knows what he is doing and I’m going to do the getting better bit after.”
She ended telling fans: “I’ll see you on the other side.”