Reality TV star Louise Thompson has revealed she was losing a cup of blood every 20 minutes before she was rushed to hospital.
The former Made In Chelsea personality, 33, has been in hospital since the end of January but has not previously disclosed information about her condition.
Sharing a photo of herself in her hospital bed on Instagram, she confirmed she was now at home after more than two weeks in hospital and was feeling "very grateful for home and for life".
Thompson has previously been open about the health issues she has suffered since the birth of her son, Leo (2) when she almost died and was left with PTSD.
She also suffers from ulcerative colitis, a chronic bowel condition leading to parts of the gut becoming swollen, inflamed, and ulcerated, and lupus, a chronic autoimmune condition, that has left her with exhaustion and joint pain.
Her recent serious health scare happened while on holiday with her family in Antigua.
In a lengthy Instagram post, which continues into a number of comments, she said that her "resilience" to pain "had skyrocketed" and she had "become desensitised".
She wrote, "Most people would be in A&E day one with my symptoms, I have no qualms in saying that because I know what my symptoms were and they were not OK, I’ll spare you some of the grittier details, but I became a little 'too used’ to my chronic condition."
Thompson said she could not walk or pick up her son and was "disoriented a lot" but "pushed through", adding: "The fear kept escalating when I was going to the loo every 20 minutes losing cupfuls of blood."
She said that her body was "surviving", "masking" and "compensating" but that her symptoms "raised alarm bells" for her family.
"I couldn’t cope anymore. Nothing was getting better on its own. Way beyond the point of self-healing, wellness, eating right bla bla bla," she said.
"Too much inflammation. Things felt a bit dangerous, I couldn’t risk deteriorating further in a foreign country with a lack of adequate health care and without my notes. I panicked. So we booked an early flight back to UK."
Thompson said she "struggled" on the flight home but it was a "small price to pay" to get back to the UK and the NHS because "things got worse quite quickly".
She continued: "Fast forward … I am alive and in good care. I have experienced some of the best care I have ever received, especially in ITU (Intensive Therapy Unit). I have cried over how compassionate and good the care has been. I will have quite some thanking to do. Lots of letters. Lots of things I can hopefully help with in the future. I’m nowhere near that place yet though. Let’s walk first."
She said she suffered huge fear during her hospital stay. "It’s only really until you’ve spent some decent time here under what feels like emergency circumstances that I would expect you to get the fear."
Thompson appeared in Made In Chelsea’s first series in 2011, progressing to become one of the E4 show’s main characters.
Her partner Ryan Libbey joined the cast in 2016 during filming in the south of France.
The couple became engaged in 2018 after he proposed during a hiking trip in Los Angeles.
