Kerry Katona, 45, reveals she was rushed to hospital over a suspected stroke after her daughter Heidi asked ‘what’s wrong with your face?’: ‘I’ve never been so scared in my life’
Kerry Katona was left fearing for her life after she was rushed to hospital over a suspected stroke.
The former Atomic Kitten star, 45, admitted she has ‘never been so scared’ after her daughter Heidi, 19, noticed she couldn’t smile properly while they were watching her eldest daughter Molly, 24, in a London play.
Kerry revealed midway through the performance she noticed her lack of facial movement when she took a trip to the bathroom.
Speaking for the first time about the terrifying health scare, Kerry told The Mirror: ‘Heidi was like, “Mum, what’s wrong with your face?” I started panicking. I discreetly left, went to my hotel and asked to see a doctor. I told the staff, “Something’s not right”.’
The hotel told Kerry a doctor wouldn’t be able to see her for four hours and so she took a taxi to St Thomas’ Hospital.
She said: ‘I got there, and they said, “We’re treating this as a stroke,” so they blue-lit me in an ambulance from St Thomas’ to King’s College Hospital. They were shining lights in my eyes while my face and speech were getting worse.
Kerry Katona was left fearing for her life after she was rushed to hospital over a suspected stroke
The former Atomic Kitten star, 45, admitted she has ‘never been so scared’ after her daughter Heidi, 19, noticed she couldn’t smile properly
‘An hour ago I was watching our Molly in a play and now I’m being treated for a stroke. What the actual f**k? It just shows how quickly things can change.’
A stroke is a medical emergency that occurs when blood flow to part of the brain is cut off (ischemic) or a blood vessel bursts (hemorrhagic), depriving brain cells of oxygen and causing them to die.
It requires immediate emergency medical attention to prevent permanent damage or death.
Petrified, Kerry messaged all of her children – Molly, Lilly, 23, Heidi, 19, Max, 18, and Dylan-Jorge, 12 – fearing she may never be able to speak to them again.
She added: ‘It really, really scared me. I texted all my children and told them I loved them. I’ve never been so scared in my life.’
Kerry had to undergo tests and CT scans to try and find out why her speech had become slurred and her facial muscles had stopped working properly.
Doctors ruled out a stroke, but Kerry said the CT scans showed ‘there’s a part of my brain that’s broken and isn’t able to send signals to my face due to stress.’
It comes after Kerry revealed earlier this month she suffered two miscarriages with boyfriend Paolo Margaglione, 33, after unexpectedly falling pregnant while filming Celebs Go Dating
She said she has noticed her speech sounds different to what it sounds like in her head and she gets shooting pains in her head.
Kerry said she is planning on getting speech therapy and doing facial exercises, with doctors telling her the movement and speech will come back.
However, she said she’s ‘getting a bit panicky with it’.
It comes after Kerry revealed earlier this month she suffered two miscarriages with boyfriend Paolo Margaglione, 33, after unexpectedly falling pregnant while filming Celebs Go Dating.
The singer has been dating personal trainer Paolo since they met on the set of Celebs Go Dating, which began filming around April 2025 and it was on the show that she fell pregnant.
The couple went public with their relationship in June 2025 and moved in together two months later.
Paolo said on Paul C Brunson’s We Need To Talk podcast,: ‘So Kerry was, unknowingly pregnant at the finale of Celebs Go Dating… I found out in the morning. I could smell it on her, like, weird. I said, “You’re pregnant”.’
Kerry said: ‘I kept getting these hormonal spots. And we did a test in the night and it said no and I said I’ll do it early morning.
‘And so we had an apartment at the hotel. I got up early, I’ll go do my meditation so I wont wake him up and I peed on the stick. This is an exclusive, I’ve not gone public with this.
‘Not told anybody this part from Anna. Don’t get jealous. And nothing came up. So I went to do meditation, I’m just gonna pop this spot, I went back and went [looks at pregnancy test] no, no, no, no way. I ran and woke him up. Seven years I never fell pregnant.’
Kerry said: ‘And then the thought of having an abortion killed me. It felt like it was made from love… And unfortunately I miscarriage and then we tried.
‘And I’d miscarried again, only at four weeks. And I didn’t realise how much I wanted it then.’
Kerry bravely spoke about a previous miscarriage in 2022 which had happened around 2015.
She wrote in her memoir, Kerry Katona: Whole Again, that she fell pregnant from a ‘rebound fling’ following the death of her ex-husband George Kay.
Kerry had a brief romance with a mystery man, revealing she fell pregnant within two weeks.
She revealed that tragically she then suffered a miscarriage, but the baby remained in her womb so she underwent an operation to have the foetus removed.