Meghan Markle father 'could take a year' to get his speech back, says Samantha Markle

Meghan Markle's sister, Samantha Markle, held back tears as she discussed her father Thomas Markle's stroke in an interview.

Speaking to Dan Wootton, she confessed that the ordeal could be 'fatal'. The father of the duchess is, however, doing better.

Ms Markle said that it was “hard for me to talk about” but that her father was doing better.

She said: “He's doing better. He's in good spirits and you know it's still hard for me to talk about because he's been through so much - the heart attack, a pandemic, a stroke.

“I don't think he saw it coming but he's doing better, he's in good spirits.

“I'm just so thankful to God that I called him when I did because he was slurring his speech, he couldn't talk.

“I feel like had we not got emergency care right away, it could have been fatal, so I feel really blessed that he's getting some of his strength back.”

Ms Markle told GB News further adds the stroke has badly affected her father.

She added: “It's going to take several, maybe six months, maybe a year to get his speech back.

“He can work with a speech therapist and it's good, the speech he had in the speech producing part of the brain wasn't so big that he can't recover.

“But you know when you're almost 80 years old, there's less plasticity and things are more difficult.

“So he has the memory of the words and the associations, the stroke was on the right side of the brain, so the damage was on the left and he's left handed.

“But it also impaired his speech and his ability to swallow.