EastEnders icon Cheryl Fergison has opened up about suffering a life-changing stroke, describing it as ‘one of the lowest times of her life’.

Beloved by soap fans for playing the perennially unlucky but always loveable Heather Trott, Cheryl was struck down with the illness this May, and has recently spoken about the moment her ‘world was rocked’.

Cheryl described the initial symptom as ‘a really bad headache at the back of my head’ to the Mirror.

‘I went to bed but couldn’t settle. When I got up in the night to go to the bathroom, my balance completely went and I had to stop myself from falling over. My whole right side felt numb, heavy and tingly.’

Worried, Chery contacted her son, Alex, who ‘recognised the symptoms’ and phoned an ambulance.

After being rushed to a hospital in Blackpool, doctors confirmed that she’d suffered a stroke.

The illness completely debilitated Cheryl. Describing the process following the stroke, she said: ‘one of the hardest things is to process what it does to you.

One minute you’re walking, talking, going to the shops; the next your world is rocked. It’s shocking.’

‘I have had to retrain my brain. I couldn’t even pick up a penny at first,’ Cheryl continued.

‘You lose the ability to coordinate your hands, to walk properly, your balance is gone. It’s frustrating and makes you angry. But I’ve started to recover; I am coming on in leaps and bounds now.’

Cheryl previously underwent surgery following a womb cancer diagnosis in 2015, which she only opened up about publicly last year.

‘I kept it quiet for a long time because I had to process a lot of it,’

Speaking on Loose Women, Cheryl spoke out about her desire to ensure women ‘listen to their bodies’ upon her realisation that her diagnosis could easily have been missed if she hadn’t have pushed for further investigation.

“I think the thing is, if I hadn’t acted on what was going on with me, I don’t feel like I would have been here today.”

She also revealed that the late Dame Barbara Windsor, perhaps the ultimate EastEnders icon, helped her out financially.

‘I went to the toilet and I’d explained everything was going on and I was going to have my operation very soon,’ Fergison explained.

“I came back and Scott [Barbara Windsor’s husband] was there with a chequebook and she went, ‘right, how much are your bills then?’ and she literally wrote a cheque out to help me pay my bills and my mortgage.’

‘I just remember, just weeping, and you have people like this and people don’t know the generosity of people and what they do, it’s amazing. I’m forever grateful.’

Cheryl is about to release her new memoir, ‘Behind the Scenes’, in which she delves deeply into her life and career and the highs and lows she’s suffered.

She has bravely dealt with homelessness following the implosion of her volatile marriage to Jay Saddiqi.

She also describes a childhood sexual assault that led her to develop a binge eating disorder.

‘I would eat in secret, when I was happy, as a treat, and when I was sad. It was my coping mechanism.’

Though raw and unflinching in the retelling of some of her most difficult times, the memoir also shares warm and humorous anecdotes.

‘In 2018, I found myself sitting on a bench in Dartford on the exact same spot I used to sit in when I was homeless but this time because I was performing in a hit musical at the theatre just a few feet away.

‘I thought, ‘wow, I have come so far.’ Life has a funny way of going full circle.’

Soap fans will also love hearing the story behind one of EastEnders most famous episodes.

‘You know that episode, where Heather and Shirely [Carter] (Linda Henry) go to George Michael’s house? That was based on real life.

‘Once when walking with Linda and Cliff Parisi in Highgate, they rang the bell and ran away, leaving me to chat to his housekeeper.

It was so embarrassing but by the time I had got to the EastEnders set George Michael left me a voice mail. He started sending me gifts and we became mates. He was such a kind man.’