I ignored Doctor Google during wife’s cancer battle, says Agnew
JONATHAN AGNEW has warned against researching symptoms online after his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The BBC cricket commentator said the internet was full of unhelpful “rubbish” that only served to confuse worried patients and their families.
Talking on Radio 5 Live about his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis, he said: “There’s so much stuff out there that you can’t even begin to understand anyway, and there’s so much rubbish out there as well.”
The Agnews had been invited onto the weekly podcast You, Me and the Big C for a group discussion on how relatives of cancer patients dealt with a loved one being diagnosed.
Agnew told other guests on the Radio 5 podcast that he had agreed with his wife Emma not to look up anything about her form of cancer. “We refused to look up anything on the internet, we would not look at anything,” said Agnew.
“We made that deal. I don’t know if Emma kept to it, but I did. We just went to our people and they looked after her, that was it.”
Show host Rachel Bland’s husband Steve said he wished his wife had followed Agnew’s example. He said problems can start “if you go online and try and interpret it yourself with very little knowledge”.
Emma Agnew, on leave from her role as editor at BBC East Midlands Radio, was diagnosed with breast cancer in July 2017, and began chemotherapy treatment in August.
Her husband said: “I had sat down with a specialist and asked ‘is she going to be alright?’.
“I’m sure they say the same thing to everybody, ‘oh yes they’ll be all right’; but I believed them, I really did believe them.”
Mrs Agnew received the all-clear in February 2018, which her husband described as “the most incredible high”.
“I said to her never forget this feeling, because that is better than… it was better than getting Viv Richards out in a test match.”
Mrs Agnew is due to return to her editorial role at BBC East Midlands next month.