Meghan Markle has been calling hospitals in the Philippines in a frantic bid to ‘reach out’ to her father Thomas, 81, after his leg was amputated, close sources say
Meghan Markle’s dad Thomas is in hospital(Image: Getty Images for Project Healthy Minds)
Meghan Markle has been calling round hospitals to try and get in touch with dad Thomas after discovering his leg was amputated, sources close to the Duchess say.
The Duchess of Sussex is said to have personally made phonecalls to hospitals in the Philippines in an urgent bid to establish the hospital logo seen in photographs on her father’s hospital gown. Mr Markle, 81, is reported to have had his leg amputated during emergency surgery this week.
Meghan was left with no option but to email her father on a previous attempt to establish contact following the surgery as she does not have a current phone number for her father, who she fell out with in the run-up to the Royal Wedding in 2018.
Meghan and her dad Thomas, pictured together when she was a teenager(Image: Netflix)
But sources say Thomas Markle does not have his phone available to him, and therefore is out of contact. Meghan has reportedly asked her PR team to reach out to journalists from certain publications who are in contact with her father to ask for information on his address and whereabouts, as she wants to send him a handwritten letter. These requests have so far gone unanswered.
Thomas Markle, 81, underwent a gruelling three-hour operation on Wednesday to remove a blood clot which had turned his leg “blue and black”, leading to the amputation of his left foot and lower leg. He has been in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Cebu in the south-central Philippines since Tuesday, according to his son, Thomas Jr.
Thomas Markle, 81, reportedly had his left leg amputated after developing a blood clot(Image: Channel 5)
He told the Daily Mail: “I took him to a local hospital and they did some scans and an ultrasound and said the leg had to be amputated. There was no option. I was told the leg had to be removed and it was a case of life or death.”
Later in the week, the Duchess of Sussex reportedly emailed her dad in an attempt to “reach out” but the email went unseen, as it was delivered to an address he had not used for five years. The father and daughter have not been on speaking terms since a row shortly before Meghan’s wedding to Prince Harry in 2018.
Meghan’s aides later made clear that if Thomas is willing to share a different email address, the message will be forwarded on. A source close to the Duchess said: “The Mail made no attempt to contact the Duchess’ team prior to publication to verify the claims in their report. Had they asked – particularly in light of the quotes they relied upon from Mr Markle and hospital staff – we would simply have told them to ask Mr Markle to check his email.”
