I’m afraid the time has come
Newsreader Rachael Bland, 40, reveals she has just days to live after chronicling her two-year breast cancer battle
BBC newsreader Rachael Bland last night announced she has only days to live after a two-year battle with breast cancer.
In a heartbreaking farewell tweet to her friends and listeners, the mother of one wrote: ‘Au revoir my friends’.
The 40-year- old BBC Radio 5 Live host, who was diagnosed in 2016, has been bravely charting her fight against the disease with a blog called Big C Little Me and a weekly podcast that brought moments of joy and hope to thousands of other sufferers.
The news anchor turned ‘lab rat’ to test an experimental drug to buy her more time with her son Freddie, who is nearly three, and her husband Steve.
But last night she quoted Frank Sinatra in an emotional post on Twitter and Instagram in which she wrote: ‘In the words of the legendary Frank S, I’m afraid the time has come my friends. And suddenly. I’m told I’ve only got days. It’s very surreal.’ Her shock message prompted an outpouring of love and sympathy from thousands of well-wishers including dozens of colleagues.
BBC presenter Victoria Derbyshire, who documented her own battle against breast cancer in 2015, tweeted: ‘Bloody hell Rachael. Courage, grace, laughter – that’s you. You are amazing.’ Radio 5 colleague Richard Bacon wrote: ‘Days. Devastating... I’m so very sorry. Your podcast has helped change the way people talk about all this.’
BBC Breakfast presenter Steph McGovern said: ‘I am so gutted for you and your family. The podcast has clearly helped so many people and you did it with such style, humour and bloody brilliance. Thank you for everything you have done.’
In a heart-wrenching interview last month, Mrs Bland revealed she decided not to find out how long she had left to live, instead ‘guesstimating’ that it was less than a year.
The newsreader declared she was ‘ not scared of dying’ but was worried about leaving Freddie and Steve behind. ‘I have to suppress a lot of the darkest thoughts about Freddie growing up without his mummy around,’ she said.
She wrote in her blog how she was with her son and his friends at a farm in May when she was given the devastating news about her prognosis. She said: ‘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 and then had to break Steve’s heart with the news that my cancer was now metastatic and therefore incurable.’ She later said she wanted to fill every day she had left with joyful memories for
‘Courage, grace and laughter’
her young son. Cardiff-born Mrs Bland, who lives in Cheshire, has been a BBC news presenter for more than 15 years.
She was known to listeners as Rachael Hodges before marrying BBC5 Live producer Steve Bland in 2014. Freddie was just 14 months old in November 2016 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Three days after Christmas that year, she embarked on four and a half months of chemotherapy.
When doctors told her she was not responding well, she took part in a clinical trial for a new immunotherapy treatment, which uses the body’s own defence system to attack cancer cells. A series of operations followed, including a mastectomy. Last October, a scan revealed the cancer had spread, before May’s terminal diagnosis.