Davina McCall had 'advanced Alzheimer's' symptoms after brain surgery: news

Davina McCall Reveals Severe “Advanced Alzheimer’s” Symptoms Following Brain Surgery

Davina McCall has opened up about suffering profound memory loss that felt like “advanced Alzheimer’s” in the aftermath of surgery to remove a benign brain tumour.

Speaking on Paloma Faith’s Mad, Sad, Bad podcast, the 58-year-old television presenter detailed the harrowing months of recovery she endured after undergoing a craniotomy to remove a 14mm colloid cyst from her brain. McCall revealed that the immediate cognitive impact was so severe that she initially did not even realise she had undergone an operation.

Critical Memory Loss and Daily Struggles During Recovery

In her emotional interview, McCall explained that her short-term memory was virtually non-existent for months following the procedure:

• Total Disorientation: Upon waking, hospital staff visited her daily and asked if she knew their names, which she could not recall.

  Digital Spy

• Extreme Short-Term Forgetting: Her partner, Michael Douglas, would spend hours by her bedside, but if he stepped out of the room briefly, she had no recollection that he had been there.

  Cosmopolitan

• Cognitive Processing Issues: She was unable to follow a narrative for six monthsforgetting the previous page of a book or what had happened 15 minutes earlier in a movie.

  Mirror

The Turning Point in McCall’s Neurological Rehabilitation

McCall described the subsequent year as the hardest period of her and Douglas’s lives. To help rehabilitate her cognitive and neural functions, she turned to singing lessons, famously referring to music as her “mind physio”.

Her key milestone came when she finally woke up and could clearly recall the events of the previous day, marking a major turning point in her recovery. McCall emphasised that while the cognitive side effects of brain tumour removal were terrifying, the experience ultimately reshaped her perspective on health and resilience.