Loose Women star Coleen Nolan said she gave up 40 years of smoking after suffering an incident in a hotel room where she believed “I am going to die”.
The 58-year-old said she has now been cigarette-free for 12 weeks after making the decision to quit when she developed an acute chest infection and was struggling to breathe.
“I literally couldn’t walk a few feet without stopping to catch my breath. It was the scariest thing, feeling constantly winded,” she told the Mirror.
Nolan said a crew member at ITV’s Loose Women insisted on taking her to see a doctor where she was placed on antibiotics, but “being a typical woman and mum, I kept saying I’d be fine”, she said.
Later, she met her 60-year-old partner Michael Jones outside a hotel, but by the time the pair were walking towards their room, Nolan was “gasping” and attempting to say she “couldn’t breathe”.
“I had a full-scale panic attack and the more stressed I got and the more I cried, the less able I was to breathe,” she said.
“I genuinely thought ‘I’m going to die in my hotel room, away from home’. It was really frightening.”
Nolan said she felt the incident was the universe telling her it was her “last chance”, and made her realise she wants to be “around for as long as I can” for her three children.