Made in Chelsea star opens up about his health anxiety after liver and kidney failure

30 May 2025, 14:13

Made In Chelsea star Sam Vanderpump has said he is dealing with anxiety about his health after a bout of sepsis.

The TV personality and businessman previously revealed he was taken to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in December 2024 with sepsis, which led to liver and kidney failure caused by flu.

He lost around 15kg and the experience inspired him to propose in March to model Alice Yaxley, he said.

Vanderpump told ITV that when he first went to hospital in December, "they discharged me, and then I got an asthma attack, and they said I had this back pain due to the asthma attack", but the doctors could not figure out his illness.

The reality star said he was shopping in London when he started becoming "dehydrated", and the next day it "got so bad, I had crusty lips. I was being delirious... she (my fiance) went, 'I've got to get you into hospital'".

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He added that it went "from 24 hours before I was shopping in Selfridges, to 24 hours later, where the doctors were telling me I was going into liver and kidney failure".

"I mean, physically, on the outside, I believe I'm back to normality. I lost 15 kilos - around that sort of mark - when I was ill, and I've managed to put on... nearly 10kg," he said.

"I think (the) mental terms are very, very hard to deal with, the mental side of post-sepsis and being able to get back into normality, because you look fine on the outside, everyone else's lives go back to normal.

"But (you are) dealing with (a) kind of health anxiety."

Vanderpump - who has the rare conditions congenital hepatic fibrosis of the liver and polycystic kidney disease, which can lead to kidney failure - also said that knowing the main symptom for him was the high temperature, he became concerned about Yaxley when she was recently ill.

"My girlfriend, fiance, got an infection recently where she's got a high temperature, and I'm rushing her to go see a doctor, because I just want to get her treated," he said.

He added that if people are concerned about "normal symptoms like the flu, breathlessness, just a little bit of aches and pains, high temperature" they should see a GP and urge them to consider sepsis.

Vanderpump has become an ambassador at charity UK Sepsis Trust, which says the condition causes "nearly 80,000 people each year (to) suffer life-changing after-effects in the UK, with 82% of sepsis survivors experiencing post-sepsis syndrome more than a year after hospital discharge, and 18% left permanently unable to work".

The reality star, who began on Channel 4 reality show Made In Chelsea last year, runs finance companies in the UK and Dubai and was previously a racing driver.

He is the nephew of Lisa Vanderpump, known for The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills and her own spin-off programmes such as Vanderpump Rules.