I scooped up my son, ran home and broke my husband’s heart
BBC radio star gets devastating cancer news
BBC presenter Rachael Bland has been told her cancer is incurable less than two years after her first diagnosis.
The Radio 5 Live newsreader endured months of chemotherapy after discovering in 2016 she had a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer known as triple negative.
Now the 40-year-old journalist, who lives in Cheshire with her husband Steve and son Freddie, two, has revealed that the cancer has spread to her skin and cannot now be cured.
Speaking about the heartbreaking phone call when she was told of the test results, she says she ‘scooped her son up’ and went home to ‘break her husband’s heart’.
On her ‘Big C Little Me’ blog she wrote: ‘I was out at the ice cream farm with Freddie and some of his little pals. 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 innomedical cently playing away in a tyre in the barn and my heart broke for him.
‘I scooped him up and dashed home and then had to break Steve’s heart with the news that my cancer was now metastatic and therefore incurable.’
Mrs Bland, a BBC news presenter for more than 15 years, has documented her struggle on an inspiring podcast as well as her blog.
It explores living with cancer through the eyes of three successful women: herself, journalist Deborah James and blogger Lauren Mahon.
The show, which has been in the top 10 on the iTunes chart, discusses juggling work, parenting and a social life while trying to survive the disease.
Five days into her first clinical trial, Mrs Bland wrote: ‘I feel a bit like a grenade with the pin out... just waiting for some odd sensations to appear. Tick tock.’
In February she underwent lymph node surgery and of 19 nodes removed by surgeons seven were cancerous.
She went back to work full-time but soon found her breast had become swollen. Assuming it was lymphedema – a build-up of fluid after nodes are removed – she checked with her team. But a subsequent biopsy revealed that the cancer had spread to her skin.
Mrs Bland says she is now trying pioneering new drugs at the Christie Clinical Trials Unit in Manchester and compares herself to a ‘lab rat’.
She wrote: ‘I am lucky that there are some options for trial treatments. They have very strict criteria for recruitment and I have gone through a fairly thorough screening to make sure I am healthy enough (ironic). Last Wednesday I started on the first clinical trial they have in store.
‘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 I hope the data I provide will at some point in the future help others. We are waiting and hoping. Whatever greater power you believe in, send us your collective prayers.’
When Mrs Bland’s cancer was first diagnosed it had spread to four lymph nodes under her right arm. After nearly five months of chemotherapy, she had operations for a lumpectomy and axillary node clearance.
In May 2017 she had a mastectomy plus further surgery to remove cancer from the margins of the previously removed breast tissue.
She then underwent 15 sessions of radiotherapy, followed by another 18 weeks of chemotherapy.
Responding to well-wishers online, she wrote yesterday: ‘Thank you so much for all your beautiful messages. It’ll take me a little while to work through them but I will! Xx’
‘It is metastatic and now incurable’