Socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson has told how she feared she was going to die when doctors revealed she had a brain tumour.
The 44-year-old former “It girl” has received treatment for the non-malignant growth in her pituitary gland since January and said it has now cleared.
She told the Daily Mail: “I went to the doctors to talk about my latest blood test results when I got back from skiing in January.
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“I said: ‘What does this mean? Can you translate it?’ And the doctor said: ‘As I suspected, you have a brain tumour’.
“I got terribly frightened. I started thinking, ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die.
“I’ve only got a couple of weeks to live.’ Stuff like that.”
Tara also said the blood tests found she was suffering with an auto-immune disease which had caused tiredness, joint pain and acute anaemia.
But the former I’m A Celebrity contestant hit out at some media coverage because she said it had been assumed her frailty was as a result of “bloody cocaine”.
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“That’s always their take on it… cocaine,” Tara said. “That was so many years ago.
“But not many people can contemplate Tara’s life without it.”
She added: “It has been really hard.
“This whole summer was quite bad. There were pictures of me going shopping with my sister.
“I’ve got white pyjamas on and was just leaving the hospital to go shopping.”
Tara endured a very public and enduring battle with cocaine addiction, which she openly discussed on a special of The Jeremy Kyle Show in 2014.
The reality TV favourite broke down as she discussed the years of self-inflicted abuse.
The 44-year-old recalled how she almost died through her addiction.
“I remember timing my heart because I knew it was going to… I remember my telephone was there and I remember crawling on my hands and knees to pick up the phone and call, and then I woke up in hospital,” she revealed.
“I remember saying my prayers. I knew my heart was stopping.”
She claimed her addiction caused her to develop a “psychosis” and was she “devious and deceptive and deceitful”.
Her family sent her to a £35,000 rehab facility in Arizona – she “got drunk” on the plane.
She then told host Jeremy that he life was now drug-free.
“I don’t have any temptation to take drugs any more. No, no, gosh no. Drugs absolutely terrify me,” she said.
She was suffering from anxiety and had become something of a recluse.
“I get terribly anxious going out,” she explained. “I’ve only been out three times this year.
“I don’t go out to public events. For the last two years I haven’t worked.
“I’ve seen a therapist every single week for the last nine, ten years of my life.”