Charles Lawson has had to "rethink his whole life" after suffering a mini-stroke on stage.
The 59-year-old actor – who is best known for his role as Jim McDonald in the ITV soap ‘Coronation Street’ – had a mini-stroke, which occurs when part of the brain experiences a temporary lack of blood flow, while on stage during a performance of Ian Rankin’s ‘Rebus: Long Shadows’ in Edinburgh last year.
The ‘Corrie’ star will now be on medication for "the rest of his life" and explained he was diagnosed with exhaustion prior to the incident and feels it could have been prevented had he dealt with "certain issues".
Speaking on ‘BBC Breakfast’, he said: "If you have alarm bells listen to them. I perhaps could have avoided this by dealing with certain issues that should have been dealt with.
"I’m now on medication for the rest of my life and I’ve learned a lesson and that’s that I’m not indestructible … I have to rethink my whole life."
Charles recalled the moment he knew "something was wrong" and admitted he felt "totally lost and extremely vulnerable" as he had the attack.
He said: "I was suffering with exhaustion at the time. I lost about two stone, I wasn’t sleeping, I’d been advised by a doctor to pull out but you can’t really do that as an actor you’ve got to carry on.
"There I was in the middle of the second half racing along doing wonderfully well and I suddenly was aware for about five seconds that something was wrong with me. In my head over those five seconds I went half deaf everybody went blue in front of me on stage.
"I was totally lost and felt extremely vulnerable all in these sort of five seconds and I was aware there was 1,800 people out there staring at me wondering what I was doing."
Charles Lawson had to ‘rethink whole life’ after mini-stroke
