Things have gone from bad to worse for “Eight Is Enough” star SUSAN RICHARDSON.
The down-on-her-luck actress still lives in a run-down trailer in a Pennsylvania campground and gets by on a paltry $2,000 monthly pension, as The National ENQUIRER has reported.
But now she’s been hit by the devastating one-two punch of losing her mother and her dog at the same time!
“My mother, Rachel, and my beloved dog, Honey Bunches of Oats, died on the same day!” a heartbroken Susan, 62, told The ENQUIRER.
“My dog died early in the morning and my mother passed later that night. She hadn’t even been sick! It nearly sent me over the edge! Oh, my God, I miss them so much.”
Susan – who played fourth oldest sibling Susan Bradford on the hit TV series from 1977 to 1981 – lives in a 28-foot 1960 Avion trailer in the Birchview Farm Campground in Wagontown, a place which has been called “a dilapidated dump.”
Her acting career hit the skids after “Eight Is Enough,” and Susan wrestled with addictions to both cocaine and painkillers.
She eventually beat her drug demons, and moved to Wagontown to be close to her mother, who lived in the nearby town of Collegeville.
But recently she’s suffered from a number of new health problems. She’s diabetic, has had three strokes and lost all her teeth to an incurable digestive tract condition. The condition triggered spasms in her esophagus, and caused her to regurgitate stomach bile, which eroded her teeth and caused infection, she explained.
“The dentist had to pull all my teeth,” she said of the ordeal. “Fortunately, I now have false teeth that my daughter bought for me.”
At one time, the disorder also triggered such intense stabbing pain that Susan stopped eating, and dropped from 167 to 107 pounds.
“I’ve gained some of that weight back, but it’s still hard for me to get food down,” she said, adding that she underwent additional surgery on her esophagus in July.
Choking back tears, Susan revealed her neighbors thought she’d died last winter.
“Someone called the police to the campground, telling them there was a dead old lady in one of the trailers. And they arrived at my place!” she recalled.
“The snow had drifted all the way up to the top of my camper. The police showed up and they ended up digging me out.
“I had no electricity or heat for five or six days.
"But I survived…just like I always do,” she concluded.
