Linda Lusardi says her kids had therapy following her coronavirus battle.
Linda Lusardi
The 62-year-old actress - who has Lucy, 25, and Jack, 22, with husband Sam Kane - nearly lost her life to COVID-19 in March 2020, which left a devastating toll on her family.
Ahead of her launch of new YouTube series Beauty Angels, she said: "It’s been horrible for everybody. My kids have had therapy (due to) the trauma of nearly losing both of us. Then we lost our dog. It’s a year you want to zip up in a suitcase and throw over the hill."
The former 'Emmerdale' star and her husband both tested positive for the respiratory illness, but Linda's doctors told her husband there was no guarantee she would survive.
Sam recalled a moment when he thought his wife "looked like she was dead" as she battled the virus last year.
He said at the time: "I kind of went into meltdown, thinking I was never going to see my wife again. I suppose, inadvertently, the doctor saying that to Linda could have potentially saved her life because by hook or by crook - an amazing nurse took me up to see Linda. When I walked through the door, I thought she was gone. She looked like she was dead. I sat her up in bed, realised that she was still with us and just spoke to her."
While Linda decided not to have therapy as she was able to process the traumatising experience when she talked about it in interviews, she believes her husband should have had treatment due to his ongoing "flashbacks".
She explained: "I did think about therapy but I didn’t in the end. I got to talk about it a lot in interviews and I think it was actually worse for people around me because I didn’t realise how bad I was.
"I think my husband Sam should have some because he still gets flashbacks about me not coming home and the fear and trauma he went through thinking I wouldn’t make it. Both Lucy and Jack had a short patch of therapy. They’re absolutely brilliant now."
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