My Kitchen Rules star reveals her devastating health battle
Roula and Rachael were billed as My Kitchen Rules’ “friends with attitude”, and so far, they’ve lived up to that description. But while she’s feisty and opinionated at the dinner table, off-camera, Roula is battling a devastating disease that’s affected her for 11 years.
Talking to New Idea, the 34-year-old revealed she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) when she was just 23.
The disease, which attacks the body’s central nervous system, has taken a huge toll on Roula, leaving her with kidney failure, blindness in one eye, hair loss, depression and anxiety.
She currently has over 90 lesions on her brain, causing episodes of complete loss of feeling in her arm and one side of her face. She was also forced to learn how to walk again after losing the use of her right leg twice.
So far, she’s battled through during her run on MKR, but Roula says it almost ended after a terrifying incident following the first Instant restaurant. She required urgent medical attention after suffering a serious bout of hypothermia and a flare up of her hiatal hernia.
“I didn’t want to talk about it on the show. I didn’t go on the show to talk about MS... but it did affect me on the show,” she told New Idea.
“I got sick a few times, I had a doctor come visit me at the hotel. With MS you get very fatigued and I got hypothermia after the very first instant restaurant. My hiatal hernia was also the reason I couldn’t eat fried food in episode one – which I could never explain to the table. It was full-on.”
Roula, who is currently competing in the Channel Seven show with her best friend Rachael, said she doesn’t want MS to define her.
“I went on MKR to prove to myself that I can be me – I can be fun, I can be loud, I can be Roula. My parents were very worried about me, worried about my health – but I told them, ‘No, I want to do this... I want to go be me for a little bit.’
“But all these people judging me by what they see on TV, they don’t really know what I’m going through deep down. I might be on a reality TV show at the moment – but dealing with my MS is my real-life reality.”
Image credit: Channel 7.