EAMONN HOLMES says he “still has so much he wants to achieve” as he updated fans following an operation which has seen him take a short break from TV.
Eamonn, 62, went under the knife last week in a bid to resolve a long-term problem with his back.
Speaking this morning on GB News Breakfast, he told his co-presenter Isabel Webster: “This time last week I was laying on a slab in a hospital being operated on. So, I’m one week on from the operation, and I have to say rumours of my death have been hugely exaggerated!
“But you know, I’m by no means finished. I’ve got an appetite for my work. I’ve still got many things I want to do. I love working with (you) Isabel and the GB News team in the morning and I want to get back as soon as I am able to.”
Updating fans on how the operation went, he added: “We’ll probably have to wait about three weeks before I will know if it’s been a success or not.”
Eamonn said he’d been thinking about having the operation for a while. But the turning point came when he was covering the Queen’s death last month on GB News.
He said: “We’ve a wonderful producer on Breakfast at GB News, a little pocket rocket who is half my size and height. She was my crutch during the outside broadcasts covering the Queen’s death. She was amazing, but it was quite embarrassing for me.”
Eamonn also had to lean on his “dearest friend” Isabel who, he said, had helped him get about while they were both presenting outside Buckingham Palace for GB News.
“We were up against the crowds,” Isabel explained to viewers this morning (WEDS).
“There was a pack of around eight people wide, walking, all trying to see the royal procession and we were going against the crowd arm in arm, and it was a long walk.”
Reflecting on the support Eamonn said: “You’re one of my dearest friends in life Isabel, and you go above and beyond the call of duty. I mean, there is such a beautiful heart with you. But I mean it was humiliating for me. You took me through that crowd. And I stumbled a few times, and my leg gave way a few times. And after that I was a bit humiliated really. You didn’t make any issue of it, but it was an issue for me.”
Explaining the lead up to last week’s operation, Eamonn added: “I’ve been living with this injury for 18 months. And four times surgeons have said to me: ‘No, there’s a 20% risk of this going wrong. We’re not going to do it, let it heal itself’. But it wasn’t healing itself, and they found a surgeon who felt neurosurgery would help.
“It just got to the stage where I thought ‘I want my life back’. But this isn’t so much about me. This is about people who have lower back injuries and who have chronic pain. I live with it.
There are so many people who suffer from this, and they have to suffer in silence. I want to try and speak up for them if I can. There’s just so many people who don’t have hope, people who have got pain and they know that it’s not going to go away. So, if you are suffering from chronic pain, I send my sympathy to you.”
