Beverley Callard feared she’d never walk again after a nightmare hip operation.
The 63-year-old ‘Coronation Street’ actress was forced to take time out from the ITV soap after a simple procedure to fix a soft tissue tear inside her hip went disastrously wrong and left her in agonising pain.
She told the Sunday Mirror newspaper: "I have been gone because it has been the worst six months of my life. I have been in the most excruciating pain you can imagine – like teeth grinding inside my hip.
"But worse than that was the mental torture of thinking ‘is this the end for me?’ A huge part of me thought I’d never be able to return to ‘Coronation Street’ – that I wouldn’t even walk again."
Beverley – who plays Liz McDonald on the soap – went to see another consultant after she was told her original doctor would not be able to complete a follow-up surgery and he believes her first operation was risky and unnecessary.
She explained: "My [new] consultant said I had bone rubbing on bone. He said, in his opinion, I shouldn’t have had the first operation and that they rarely do this op on women because it’s unsuccessful.
"He said, ‘if you’re a 27-year-old woman, it had a 27 per cent chance of going wrong. Beverley, you’re 63. He believed it could have been sorted with injections."
And Beverley said the horrific experience has completely changed her life.
She said: "Now I’m learning how to walk on both legs again. At one point we thought we might have to have a stairlift installed in the house. We even had a look at prices. That was a shock.
"Before all this I was a fit woman, exercising three times a week. Going up the stairs was really hard. I was worried about that at times."