Linda Lusardi reveals her children underwent therapy to get over her terrifying near-fatal coronavirus battle
LINDA Lusardi has opened up about the 'devastating' toll the coronavirus took on her family, especially their mental health.
Former Page 3 model Linda Lusardi, 62, contracted Covid-19 in March 2020.
Linda, who lives in London with actor husband Sam Kane, 52, and their children Lucy, 25, and Jack, 22, almost died from coronavirus which left them traumatised.
"It’s been horrible for everybody," she said while promoting her YouTube series, Beauty Angels.
"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."
Linda herself decided not to have therapy: "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."
Linda was so seriously ill she "death’s door" was put on oxygen and felt so bad she "wanted to die".
The model also opened up about the long term side effects from having Covid, from hair loss to tiredness and not being able to drink alcohol.
"Back then, these side-effects weren’t widely known. I wondered if it was because I was getting old," she wrote in The Sun about her hair loss.
"I did ITV skating show The Real Full Monty On Ice, alongside Dr Zoe Williams, who confirmed to me it was post-viral trauma to the hair.
"She said it would probably come back but my hair got very thin and I was worried."
Linda also admitted missing her gin and tonics, but drinking was no longer "worth it".
"Since Covid I can’t drink. I can’t drink alcohol so it makes me wonder if I have slight liver damage," she explained.
"I just feel really ill about half an hour after I’ve drunk it… And I love my gin and tonics, my prosecco.
"I had the occasional gin and tonic but it’s not worth feeling rough. It’s pretty instant.
"I think “oh I’ve got a headache coming on”. It’s like a hangover. It’s lucky my party days are over. I would have been desperate in my 20s."
In 1976, at the age of 18, Linda began appearing as a Page 3 girl in The Sun and continued to do so until 1988.
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She posed nude in the men's magazine Mayfair in February 1977 and Fiesta later that year in November 1977.
In a poll carried out by The Sun in 2005, Linda she was voted the best Page 3 girl ever.
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She has also appeared on Emmerdale, The Bill, Hollyoaks and Brookside, as well as numerous chat shows, game shows and reality shows.
Linda wed actor Samuel Kane in 1998.