Amanda Holden’s ‘healthy’ teenage daughter was rushed to hospital after contracting the life-threatening illness, E.coli.
Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda, 53, revealed her 18-year-old daughter, Lexi Hughes, whom she shares with her record producer husband Chris Hughes, was recently admitted to hospital after complaining of ‘bloating and stomach cramps’.
Whilst she did not state when the hospitalisation occurred, she said her daughter was the 113th person in the UK to contract the illness.
The UK Health Security Agency announced on June 27 that one person had died and a further 120 others, including young children, had been hospitalised, indicating Lexi’s hospitalisation was likely around June.
In a lengthy article, the mother of two spoke out about the terrifying moment she was told her daughter had a bacterial infection and was at risk of contracting sepsis, meaning she had to rush her to the hospital.
Lexi, who was sitting her A-levels at the time of contracting the infection, was at home in bed with chronic bowel pain when Amanda received news of her daughter’s concerning blood results and was suffering from a fever of ’39 point something’.
‘I was driving back home one day and I had Hollie, my youngest, in the car with me when the doctor called and said: “I don’t want to alarm you Amanda, but Lexi’s bloods and everything else are through the roof. You need to check that her temperature doesn’t rise because she’s in danger of contracting sepsis.”’ She told The Sun.
Amanda continued to say she ‘burst into tears’ after the ‘terrifying’ phone call and rushed home where she took her daughter’s temperature ‘every hour, on the hour’.
In the morning, the TV star called her friend who advised her to take Lexi to hospital. Amanda told the news outlet ‘We went straight to Northwick Park Hospital — which specialises in tropical illness and bacterial infection — and we had the most incredible team there who put her on an antibiotic drip.’
She said she was filming Britain’s Got Talent while her daughter was in hospital and while she would have had ‘no hesitation’ in pulling out of the show, she fortunately didn’t have to as Lexi began getting better thanks to ‘the brilliant hospital’.
After five days under the care of medical professionals, Lexi was released home and has since received frequent blood tests to test her inflammation markers.
Amanda said her daughter is ‘doing so much better’, has ‘no long-term damage’ and is even ‘out drinking with friends’ but stated the teen has an ‘ongoing problem with her tummy’ and may require an endoscopy.
The worried mum said she decided to speak out about her daughter’s health scare partly thanks to Lexi’s encouragement but also because she feels ‘no one’ is taking the illness seriously.
‘We think Lexi caught it from a bag of pre-washed supermarket lettuce, which is scary as obviously you think ‘pre-washed’ means it’s fine. So I urge everyone to forensically wash their fruit and veg,’ she said.
She continued to say anyone suffering from symptoms should ‘ask for a stool sample’ as she stated it is more likely to show up in that than in a blood sample.
E.coli is a bacterial illness that can often cause symptoms of watery diarrhoea, abdominal pain and fatigue. Most people will recover without medication or hospital treatment.
More severe cases include bloody diarrhoea, vomiting and a temperature of more than 38 degrees.
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