GARY LINEKER Moment the docs told me my little boy had cancer..
GARY Lineker is haunted by memories of his son battling cancer as a baby.
George was just six weeks old when he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia.
To this day Gary, 61, vividly remembers the moment he was given the news by doctors.
He said: “I’ll never forget, the two guys just looked at each other and they just said, ‘I’m sorry, but this does look like something much more serious. We need to do some tests, but it does look like leukaemia.’
“I knew it was a blood cancer and you know it’s super-serious, but it’s a baby. How does that happen?”
George was taken to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London for emergency treatment. Frantic Gary and his then-wife Michelle were left fearing the worst.
Former England star and current BBC Match
Of The Day presenter
Lineker recalled:
“Twice they told us they didn’t think he’d make it through the night after treatments and stuff.”
He went on: “It was pretty terrifying at various stages of it.
“By the time they had put all these fluids in his body, he was like a balloon. Like, just a ball.
“I used to have this recurring nightmare that would happen so often of me carrying a tiny white coffin. It was brutally tough.”
Thankfully George beat the cancer and, now 30, is fighting fit and a successful entrepreneur. But Gary is still affected by what happened, with TV shows becoming especially poignant.
He said: “It was just dread, fear, heartbreaking, terrifying. It’s brutal. I don’t know what we’d have done, how we’d have coped, if we hadn’t got through.
“Still things like that with kids gets me. And Ricky Gervais’ After Life… anyone that’s seen it will know what I’m talking about. It just got me.”
You can hear the full interview on the BBC podcast Tony Bellew Is Angry.
‘Twice the doctors told us they didn’t think he’d make it’