BBC presenter ‘berated’ by trolls over cancer treatment
RACHEL BLAND, the BBC presenter who revealed she has “days to live” after a battle with cancer, has hit out at online trolls who “berated” her for not “trying hard enough” to save herself.
The BBC Radio 5 Live presenter has described her experience with breast cancer in an article for the Huffington Post, published yesterday. It highlighted the response she received from the public, though not all of it positive.
On Monday, Bland announced via Twitter that she only has days to live and has since received an outpouring of support online from fellow journalists and colleagues.
But in the Huffington Post article, written prior to her statement on Monday, the BBC journalist recalled that the online messages were sometimes mixed.
“I was sent so many beautiful messages,” she said. “Along with many telling me to go to foreign climes to try miracle cancer treatment – FYI these all get deleted immediately.”
Bland went on to state she also received criticism for “not trying hard enough” to save herself – though she did not elaborate on how many of these messages she received.
Emphasising her support for “modern medicine”, Bland stated that she had enrolled in clinical trials and was encouraged by new treatment options early on in her diagnosis.
“You need two major things to get you through. Hope and denial,” she said. Bland, who is married and has a three-year-old son, Freddie, wrote that she had set out to complete a “memoir” of her life, for her son to remember her by.
“I hope the book and these gifts and notes will leave an imprint of my love behind for the rest of his life. So he can be sure how very much I love him,” she said.