Madeleine West has confessed that she has been battling an undisclosed health issue.
In this week’s issue of Stellar Magazine, the former Neighbours star reveals that she contracted a severe septic infection while cleaning up flood-ravaged Byron Bay earlier this year, where she came into contact with E.coli-contaminated muck.
The 41-year-old claims she was hallucinating because of high fever and initially assumed she had Covid-19.
However, a trip to the doctor discovered that an infection had developed in an incision from a recent breast operation to remove a lump.
Madeleine had surgery in July to remove a precancerous growth from her breast, which she described as “ugly enough and fast-growing enough to be a concern.”
‘It’s really simple to become caught up in fear. But I was determined that this, too, would pass, so I immediately got right to work on fixing it,’ she said of the encounter.
In another part of the interview, the actress stated that she will not be returning to Neighbours for a final season.
After 37 years on the air, the show will be canceled in June, with the final episodes airing in September.
Madeleine portrayed Dee Bliss in the serial opera from 2000 to 2003, until her character was murdered on the day of her wedding to Ryan Moloney’s Toadfish Rebecchi.
‘I enjoy the thought of being known as the girl who married Toadie and then died on her wedding day,’ she explained.
‘The end of Neighbours is incredibly painful… Neighbors will always have a place in our hearts,’ she adds.
Madeleine’s followers were astonished when she disclosed she’d been hospitalized for an unknown operation in February.
She revealed she was getting a check-up following her cancer scare by posting a ‘pre-surgery selfie’ of herself in a hospital gown, mask, and cap.
She captioned it, jokingly, ‘Pre-surgery chic!’ before adding, ‘I want to claim I only did it for the #fashion but seriously people CHECK YOUR BOOBS!!!’
‘#allclear #oneoftheluckyones #regularbreastchecks #nothingtoseehere,’ she wrote besides the hashtags.
Madeleine asserted that she was ‘fine’ after the operation in a lengthy Instagram post, but conceded that the procedure had worried her.
‘It was inconvenient, frightening, but necessary; it was one of those ailments that many women and some men may suffer, but can overcome with the correct care,’ she explained.
In 2018, the soap star and her 46-year-old chef partner, Shannon Bennett, divorced. Phoenix, Hendrix, Xascha, Xanthe, Xahlia, and Margaux are their six children.
