Melissa Suffield has issued a health update after undergoing an ‘endoscopy’ for her mystery illness.
The former EastEnders star, 31, previously told how she has felt like ‘pure s**t’ and nauseous for months, with doctors struggling to find the cause.
Melissa, who played Lucy Beale in the BBC soap for six years until 2010, explained she has now had her B12 iron appointment and her first NHS gastro appointment.
In a post to her Instagram, she said: ‘So I went to Dr Cline at the Cambridge Iron clinic because he is kind of the only doctor I could find who would deal with B12.’
‘So basically with B12, brief science lesson from someone who’s not scientific, with B12 if your level is low, it can affect all f****ng parts of your body.’
Melissa Suffield has issued a health update as she was initially ‘rejected’ for a gastro appointment after undergoing an ‘unremarkable endoscopy’ for her mystery illness
The former Eastenders star, 31, previously told how she has felt like ‘pure s**t’ and nauseous for months , with doctor’s struggling to find the cause
‘The symptoms you can get with low B12, are normally like 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, nausea, all of mine are gut issues, so really it can be at the at the root of a lot of other things.’
She also confessed that her levels were rather low, however, her initial GP didn’t believe it was ‘low enough’
She said: ‘Anyway when mine (B12 levels) was checked in January, my level was 146, this is low, but because it wasn’t quite low enough, which is 145, out of a scale of 145 up to 914 so pretty a big f****g scale.
‘I was one point over, but I was told I was normal because I was in that normal range.
‘I didn’t think anything of it, I kind of pushed because it was a bit low and they went yeah we’ll just give you some oral tablets.’
‘However, if your body is not absorbing B12, then oral tablets will do s**t all for you, it will just sit in your blood and you will wee them out, you need to be absorbing B12.’
Melissa, who played Lucy Beale in the BBC soap of six years until 2010, explained she has now had her B12 iron appointment and her first NHS gastro appointment
Claiming she went to see a doctor named Dr Cline, Melissa revealed he said: ‘There’s a very strong chance that you have low B12, maybe not all your life, but certainly for a while.’
She then shared that she had an iron infusion which left her with a ‘fu***ng whopper of a bruise’.
However, she admitted: ‘(It) happens to me a lot when I have cannula so I was expecting that, but maybe not as dark as that but I was expecting it, so not a problem, and he said that will last about two years.’
Melissa then moved on to her gastro appointment and laughed as she said ‘As we all know I was rejected from NHS gastro, I put a referral in March, after my endoscopy came back, and the referral was rejected the next day.’
She then admitted she was not contacted by any healthcare professional to tell her it had been rejected.
She said: ‘However, nobody told me, or even my GP’s, not one of them.’
‘So we was sitting waiting for this referral date to come through, and I’m kind of chasing it and people are going “You’re not in the system”, so I was like hmm this doesn’t sound right.’
‘So I called my local hospital and I found out the name of the woman for the gastro department, and I asked to be put through directly to her.’
Melissa then revealed her anger once she found out her referral had been rejected.
She revealed: ‘She basically said yeah you don’t have a referral, so I put in a complaint and basically said there’s absolutely no f****ng way that this referral should have been rejected.’
Previously, Melissa revealed that she lost an unhealthy amount of weight in a very short amount of time due to the mystery illness (left after and right before)
She shared her health woes with fans and told how she has felt like ‘pure s**t’ and nauseous for months
‘Because their reason for rejecting it is that I had a clear ultrasound and upper endoscopy down my throat.’
‘And because it was clear, it couldn’t possibly be a gastro issue, and I was like “that’s f****ng bullshit because there are countless other things that I could have that match my symptoms which you would never diagnose on either one of those imaging tests.’
‘Anyway in doing this (putting in several complaints) somewhere down the line, my referral came through.’
Melissa then shared that she is now hoping to get a gastroparesis test to outline any other gut issues.
She said: ‘Gastroparesis is one of the things I want them to investigate.’