SHOCK: Katie Piper reveals the truth about why she had to ‘gutted’ and the ‘complications’ she faced afterwards: “I fear the people who made me like this, and I will never return to Loose Women – a snake pit”

The Loose Women star, 40, pulled out of her ITV programme for two weeks in a row after undergoing an ‘unexpected medical procedure’.

It was later claimed she had ‘quite a bad reaction’ and was left ‘feeling really poorly’.

However, Katie has now shared an update with her fans after being discharged from hospital, and has returned to work with a positive attitude.

Sharing a video on Instagram, Katie said: ‘I just wanted to make a little video to say thank you all for all your messages, DMs.

Comments and support, and just to let you know, I’m good, I’m doing fine.’

She went on: ‘I know lots of you have had trauma and things happen to you that means maybe you live with disease.

Disability, sickness, or maybe some kind of mental scars if not physical scars.

‘And you’ll know that sometimes, as determined as you are to not let come into your present or your future, or make you different from everybody else, sometimes the annoying thing is you are different from other people and medical things happen and they can hold you back even if it is temporary.

‘And that is what has happened to me recently unfortunately. I was so gutted to not be a part of the breakfast show.’

‘Anyone who knows me will know I hate calling in sick for work or letting people down or not showing up, and unfortunately that’s what happened,’ she went on, saying she was physically unable to record the show because she’d been in hospital.

Katie went on to explain that she’d had problems with her retina, which she’d never experienced before, having had problems with her cornea previously.

‘I had further complications and quite a bad infection,’ she said.

‘I’ve had to admit defeat and say as much as I don’t want any of my past to determine my future, sometimes I have to accept that that is part of being a burn survivor, and it’s held me back and got me down for the past couple of weeks, but now I’m recovered and better.’

Katie added that she had returned to work this week and was feeling more like ‘her old self’.

‘I’m learning to be more patient with myself and never take the little things for granted, because they definitely the big things,’ she concluded.

While she has not given any further details about the unplanned procedure and only shared pre-recorded clips on social media, Katie underwent eye surgery in December.

She explained how her eye was being semi-permanently closed to ‘preserve the eye, avoid perforation and losing my eye completely.’

Speaking on Loose Women in December, Katie explained how the eye procedure is called a tarsorrhaphy.

‘It’s an operation done in theatre and your eye is fully or partially stitched up,’ she said.

‘I’ve had a lot of problems with my eye in the last year and a half, I don’t like to go on about it because there’s always somebody worse off.

‘It’s been quite painful so it’s quite a relief for me to finally have it stitched up, because it’s a lot more comfortable.’

She went on to share that it wouldn’t be permanent and was set to be opened again after a year.

Katie suffered blindness in one eye along with other life changing injuries and burns after a horror acid attack in 2008.

The star’s talk show on ITV, Katie Piper’s Breakfast Show, airs every Saturday and Sunday morning at 8.25, and is currently in its second season.