Home and Away’s golden couple had a dramatic first date.
Although Sophie Dillman and Patrick O’Connor of Home and Away are the cutest couple on and off-screen, their first date was actually quite eventful.
Dillman, who portrays Ziggy Astoni on the soap opera, spoke candidly about her endometriosis in a recent interview with Yahoo! Lifestyle. She also discussed how it affected her first date with O’Connor. Endometriosis is a condition where tissue that resembles uterine lining grows in other parts of the body. It can cause excruciating pain and take a significant toll on a person’s mental health as well as their general quality of life.
In Newtown, New South Wales, Dillman and O’Connor were enjoying burgers when she unexpectedly needed to leave the establishment.
“I said, ‘I have to sit down, right now.’ And [Patrick] was like, ‘Sophie, we’re on King Street, you can’t sit down,’” Dillman said.
“So I was sitting like in a laneway, and I rang my mum and I was like, ‘Mum, I’ve gotta go to the hospital, it’s so bad, I don’t have enough painkillers.’ My sister was giving me all this advice as well, and he’d never seen anything like that before, the poor guy!”
Dillman continued, “He was like, ‘I don’t know how to help you, but I’m gonna try.’ And he was just so wonderful. Bless his cotton socks, when my endometriosis started getting really bad again, he did heaps of research, and he has a hot water bottle in his car for me.”
When they first started dating and were living apart, O’Connor created a “pain packet” at his house just in case Dillman needed it. According to Dillman, O’Connor was the most helpful partner she could have had.
Dillman claimed that having people in her life who are like O’Connor makes the excruciating condition a little bit easier to bear.
“Those people who support you in your life, whether they are your partner, parents, friends, or family, are just precious gems. And yes, without you, we couldn’t do it.
Dillman and O’Connor have been dating for a while and attended acting school together when they were younger. Home and Away welcomed Dillman in 2017, and a year later welcomed O’Connor as Dean Thompson. In the program, they play a couple.
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