New cancer drug is last hope for BBC radio star
‘I watched my little Freddie playing and my heart broke’
BBC presenter Rachael Bland has revealed she has incurable cancer and is pinning her hopes on a pioneering new drug.
The Radio 5 Live newsreader, who has blogged about her 18-month battle with illness, said she has turned “lab rat” after the shock diagnosis came in a phone call while out with her son.
She said she now felt “like a grenade with the pin out”, adding: “Tick tock.”
The 40-year-old revealed she received the devastating news while at a children’s farm attraction with her two-year-old and his pals.
She said: “My heart raced as I answered it, knowing a phone call did not bode well. Then came the words, ‘I am so sorry, it’s bad news. The biopsies have come back showing the same cancer is back and is in the skin’.
“I watched my little Freddie innocently playing away in a tyre in the barn and my heart broke for him. I scooped him up and dashed home.”
Once home, she had to break her husband Steve’s heart with the news her cancer was “now metastatic and therefore incurable”. But she said she felt “lucky” to be accepted on a clinical trial – which, even if it fails to help her, may one day offer some hope to others.
She said: “I feel an odd sense of pride that I am one of fewer than 150 people worldwide who will test it.
“If it doesn’t help me then I hope the data I provide will at some point in the future help others in the same position.”
Rachael, who lives in Knutsford, Cheshire, was first diagnosed with primary triple-negative breast cancer in November 2016.
A month later she started a course of chemotherapy, followed by a lumpectomy and axillary node clearance in May last year.
Last July she had a mastectomy and in August began 15 sessions of radiotherapy, followed by another 18 weeks of chemo.
In October, she said a CT scan and biopsy showed cancer had spread to the lymph nodes under the arm on the opposite side to the primary cancer.
She has documented her battle in an inspirational blog, “Big C Little Me. Putting the Can into Cancer”, and a podcast “You, Me & the Big C”. Thousands of listeners tune in to hear her weekly discussions with social media manager Lauren Mahon and Sun columnist Deborah James about living with cancer.
But at the weekend she wrote: “I would love to be writing you a more positive post but the bad news keeps on racking up.
“My lymph node surgery in February went to plan but the results as ever weren’t good.
“Seven out of 19 nodes removed were positive for cancer – a sign the previous four months of chemo hadn’t cut the mustard.
“My surgeon was happy he’d done as much as he could and a CT scan a couple of weeks later showed no new nasty surprises.
“Still, no reason to be reaching for the lifeboats just yet. A few days later came the call...”
Rachael is now undergoing immunotherapy with a new trial drug and started on the first clinical trial at Manchester’s Christie Hospital last week.
She initially went through a screening process and is now being monitored for side-effects.
She said: “I am lucky that there are some options for trial treatments. It’s an immunotherapy approved for other cancers and works by getting your own immune system to start attacking the cancer. Immunotherapy is considered to be the future of targeted cancer treatment.
“It works well in some types of cancer but not in breast cancer.
“I am taking it with a new trial drug that is designed to try and make it more effective. It is very early in the process.”
She added: “I feel a bit like a grenade with the pin out… just waiting for some odd sensations to appear. Tick tock.
“We’re waiting and hoping. Whatever greater power you believe in, send us your collective prayers.”