Married at First Sight expert Mel Schilling has shared a health update (Picture: Channel Nine)
Married at First Sight expert Mel Schilling is heading home for Christmas after undergoing surgery for colon cancer.
Last week the Australian TV star, 51, announced she’d been diagnosed with cancer after her symptoms had been mistaken for constipation.
At the time she revealed she’d named her tumour Terry and was ‘incredibly blessed’ that the form of cancer was ‘relatively easy to eradicate’.
Despite facing a ‘rough road ahead’, Mel said she was expected to make a ‘full recovery’.
She’s now shared another health update on social media about her plans for the festive period, sharing with her followers she was heading home after spending some time in hospital.
On Christmas Eve Mel shared a story from her hospital bed, revealing she was enjoying watching a festive TV special before being discharged.
She was expecting to spend Christmas Day in hospital after undergoing surgery for colon cancer (Picture: Mel Schilling/ Instagram)
‘If you gotta be in hospital Christmas Eve…do it with Hannah,’ she wrote alongside a photo of the Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas show playing on her laptop screen.
Later in the day she then revealed she was able to go home for the big day despite originally believing she was set to spend Christmas in hospital.
Sharing a photo with her husband Gareth Brisbane and their daughter Madison as they stood smiling in Kingston Hospital in London in their Christmas jumpers, she shared: ‘Driving home for Christmas.’
However she was later told she could go home (Picture: Mel Schilling/ Instagram)
She was quickly met with many messages of support from fans and friends alike.
‘The best news. Merry Christmas to you all x’ Kate Lawler wrote.
Meanwhile a fan shared: ‘Amazing news. You truly are superwoman. Onwards and upwards Mel. You’re an honorary British national treasure now and so get well soon. We (the UK) love you.’
Mel, who appears on the British and Australian versions of the reality dancing series, first revealed she had colon cancer in an Instagram post last week.
She shared this photo after undergoing surgery a few days ago (Picture: Mel Schilling/ Instagram)
In it, she wrote that she’d been diagnosed a month after she began to feel pain in her stomach while filming MAFS Australia’s upcoming eleventh season.
‘I developed severe stomach cramps on set, I put it down to all the travel I’d been doing and the upset it caused to my system,’ she explained.
After visiting her GP, he gave Mel some laxatives, believing she was simply experiencing constipation.
Mel appears as an expert on both the UK and Australian series’ (Picture: Matt Monfredi Ltd)
However, knowing ‘something still wasn’t right’, Mel booked herself in for a scan when she returned to the UK and was then given the diagnosis.
‘In an instant my whole life changed,’ she wrote.
While Mel and her family initially had plans to spend Christmas in Northern Ireland with her husband’s family, she had to undergo an operation to remove the 5cm tumour in her colon, which she said that if it had gone undetected for much longer ‘would have killed me’.
She went on to say she felt ‘incredibly blessed’ as her cancer was one ‘relatively easy to eradicate’ and she was lucky ‘to have an incredible support network around me’.
Married at First Sight is streaming on Channel 4.
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She was initially expected to spend Christmas Day in hospital.