Martine McCutcheon has opened up about her life-altering diagnosis, confessing she was initially in “denial”.
The star struggled to accept her ADD (attention deficit disorder) diagnosis while dealing with the grief of losing her brother.
The 48-year-old actress, who also battles ME (chronic fatigue syndrome), found it tough to even leave her bed after her brother Laurence John passed away at 31 in 2022 without any medical explanation.
Martine realised she had ADD when she noticed “different things I struggled with compared to other people”.
She described her past efforts to fit in as trying to be “spent so much time trying to be a square in a round circle, and it was exhausting”, which she found utterly draining, reports the Mirror.
According to The Sun, Martine reflected: “I did struggle with a lot of things that I don’t think I would have done necessarily. I think that if I’d have known before those four years ago that I had ADD, I don’t know if I would have been able to have coped with it the way that I do now.”
She added: “I think, thank god people are being kinder and more knowledgeable about ADD and ADHD. People says, oh, everybody’s got something these days – but I don’t think it’s these days. I think we’ve always been around but we all blossom in different ways, and we need different things to blossom. And it all made sense.”
Martine shared her heart-rending struggle, revealing: “At first I went into denial, completely into denial, because my brother had passed away. I’ve been diagnosed with ME, and I just thought, I can’t take this diagnosis on and whatever it means. I need to just keep going at life the way that I am.”
Adding further, Martine said: “And in a way, I was kind of right. And then when I did finally look at it, I cried, I cried, cried and cried, I grieved, and it was just for if only I’d known how different things could have been, how much more with ease I would have been able to have done things.”
Now embracing a calmer lifestyle post-diagnosis and her split from husband Jack McManus after 18 years together earlier this year, Martine remarked she takes things more slowly and believes that the right opportunities will find their way to her. She highlighted her revelation, saying people are “so busy” being distracted by things that they often “miss the key opportunities”.
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