Melissa Suffield says she’s ‘never been sicker in her life’ amid her chronic illness battle as she admits things are ‘very bleak’ this Christmas

Melissa Suffield has likened her life to a “sick joke,” as she explained despite taking steps to get healthy, she feels sicker than ever amid her battle with chronic illness.

The former EastEnders star, 31, was diagnosed with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) after feeling sick for months, with doctors struggling to find the cause.

And as a result, she admitted she wasn’t “feeling very festive this year” and won’t even be enjoying Christmas dinner.

Speak with The sunMelissa says: ‘Last year I cooked Christmas dinner and didn’t eat any of it. For me, I’d say about 80% of the joy comes from all the food. So I don’t feel very festive this year.’

She went on to explain how she had been at her healthiest this year, after making sure she only drank water and preparing all her food at home.

However, she said that despite these measures she had “never been so sick” and lamented that things were “very bleak”.

Melissa said: ‘This is on paper: this year I have been healthier than ever before. I sleep reasonably well. I’m getting a lot of vitamins and minerals that my body needs, and I’ve never been so sick in my life.”

‘I haven’t had a drop of alcohol and I’m like, look how I’m doing! It’s just kind of a sick joke, so healthy on paper, and so unhealthy in reality. It’s very bleak, I would say, quite bleak.”

Earlier this month, the body-positive star opened up about her ‘frustrating’ illness, which has seen her lose a lot of weight, but she insisted she ‘felt happier growing up’.

Melissa – who played Lucy Beale in the BBC soap for six years until 2010 – opened up about how the chronic illness affects her on a daily basis, revealing she is now ‘less healthy’ than she was a year ago.

Admitting “nothing” about the “frustrating” condition has been a choice, she added that she is currently wearing her pre-pregnancy jeans.

‘But there is no joy. “I don’t like at all that that happened in the way you know, that’s a goal for a lot of people,” she said. The sun.

‘It’s never been a goal for me. But B, this is the complete antithesis of what I ever wanted for my body.”

The media personality admitted that the chronic disease has significantly affected her skin and hair health.

‘What is [losing weight because of SIBO] What helped me do that is prove the point I’ve always, always made, which is that you can’t define how healthy someone is by how much they weigh, or how fat you think they look, or whatever it is you think you know. she said.

The mum-of-one commented that she is ‘more of a burden on the NHS’ at the moment than when she was ‘bigger last year’.

She did not shy away from describing the grueling commute to hospital and completing 40 GP visits this year as she was ‘tossed around from this ward to this ward’.

The former actress bluntly added that she has spent an “obscene amount of money on prescriptions” and emphasized to raise awareness that “being thinner doesn’t mean you’re healthier” – a concept she also brought up often on her social media platforms .

Earlier in July this year, Melissa issued a health update after undergoing an ‘endoscopy’ for her – at the time – mysterious illness.

At the time she explained that she had had her B12 iron appointment and her first NHS gastro appointment.

In a post on her Instagram, she said: ‘So I went to see Dr Cline at the Cambridge Iron Clinic as he is about the only doctor I could find who would deal with B12.’

“So basically with B12, a quick science lesson from someone who is not scientific, with B12, if your levels are low, it can affect all parts of your body.”

“The symptoms you can get with low B12 are normally low energy, tingling, numbness and things like that, but I didn’t really have those.”

She also admitted that many other symptoms can indicate low B12, including fatigue, dizziness, headaches and nausea.

She said: ‘So many other symptoms, like fatigue, dizziness, headaches and nausea, they’re all gut problems, so it could actually be the cause of a lot of other things.’

She also confessed that her levels were quite low, but her first GP did not believe it was ‘low enough’

She said: ‘When mine (B12 levels) were checked in January my level was 146, this is low but because it wasn’t quite low enough which was 145, on a scale of 145 to 914, so nice a big f****g scale.

‘I was one point above, but I was told I was normal because I was within that normal range.

“I didn’t think about it, I pushed a little because it was a little low and they said, yeah, we’ll just give you some oral tablets.”

‘However, if your body isn’t absorbing B12, oral tablets will do everything for you, it just sits in your blood and you pee them out, you have to absorb B12.’

Melissa claimed she went to a doctor called Dr. Cline revealed that he said, “There’s a very good chance you’re going to have low B12, maybe not all your life, but certainly for a while.”

She then said she had been given an iron infusion, which left her with a ‘fucking whopper of a bruise’.

However, she admitted: ‘(It) happens to me a lot when I have a cannula, so I expected that, but maybe not as dark as that, but I expected it, so no problem, and he said this would take about two hours . years.’

Melissa then continued with her gastro appointment and laughed as she said: ‘As we all know I have been rejected from NHS gastro. I submitted a referral in March, after my endoscopy came back, and the referral was rejected the next day.”

She then admitted that she had not been contacted by any healthcare professional to tell her that the application had been rejected.

She said: ‘But no one told me, not even my GP.’

“So we were waiting for this referral date to come, and I’m kind of chasing it and people are like, ‘You’re not in the system,’ so I thought, hmm, this doesn’t sound good.”

‘So I called my local hospital and found out the name of the woman in the gastro department, and I asked if I could be put through to her directly.’

Melissa then revealed her anger when she found out her referral had been rejected.

She revealed: ‘She basically said yes, you don’t have a referral, so I filed a complaint and said there is absolutely no way this referral should have been rejected.’

“Because their reason for rejecting it is that I had a clear ultrasound and an upper endoscopy in my throat.”

“And because it was obvious, it couldn’t possibly be a gastrointestinal problem, and I thought, ‘That’s fucking nonsense, because there are tons of other things I could be getting that match my symptoms that you would never diagnose. set. one of those imaging tests.”

“Anyway, by doing this (filing several complaints) my referral got through somewhere.”

Melissa then said that she now hopes to have a gastroparesis test to identify any other intestinal problems.

She said, “Gastroparesis is one of the things I want them to investigate.”