I ignored lump for a year before I showed my doctor
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CHEF Billy Wright is on a mission to get men talking about their health. The MasterChef finalist was diagnosed with thyroid cancer aged just 33, after he had ignored a lump in his neck for more than a year.
“Men definitely need to get better at talking about their symptoms,” says Billy, now 35.
“I didn’t go to a doctor until about a year after I should have done. But with these things the sooner they catch it, the easier it is to treat.”
He blames his reluctance to see his doctor on having a British “stiff upper lip” attitude to his health, something he says men suffer from more than women.
“I noticed the lump about a year before I went to the doctor,” he says. “I always suffered from swollen glands and sore throats as a child and I assumed it was just a gland that hadn’t gone down so I stupidly never got it checked.”
Billy rose to fame when he took part in BBC’s MasterChef in 2016.
With his easy-going demeanour, he soon captured hearts across the country and made it to the final of the series.
Overnight he became a household name and went on to found a business with fellow finalist and close friend Jack Layer.
“A lot changed in such a short space of time. When you appear on MasterChef, you go from being a good home cook to being thrust on to TV and watched by six million people in the final,” says Billy, who lives in west London with his girlfriend Zoe, 32, an art consultant.
It was in the midst of all this success that Billy received his devastating diagnosis.
While he had been filming MasterChef, Billy had no symptoms but a few months afterwards he noticed a lump in his neck that was about the size of a 50p coin.
The lump persisted but Billy put off going to see his GP. A year after he had found the lump he developed a cough that didn’t go away.
AFTER a month of coughing, Billy finally booked a doctor’s appointment where he was told by the GP that he may have pneumonia. But an ultrasound scan revealed something different.
The cough was a symptom of two cancerous tumours which were growing in his neck. “I was nervous and worried,” he admits. “It turned out the cough wasn’t an illness but a secondary symptom.”
Doctors suspected the cancer was lymphoma, a disease that affects lymphocyte cells, which live in the lymph nodes, spleen, thymus and bone marrow.
Depending on the severity of the disease, lymphoma can be treated with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and bone marrow transplants.
Over the next five weeks, Billy had tests to assess how far the cancer had spread.
“Those five weeks were the worst part because we were all on tenterhooks waiting for a diagnosis and not knowing what it might be,” he says. “Everyone was very supportive. My mum’s had bowel cancer so she was a very good person to talk to.”
Billy had a biopsy on the tumours and doctors discovered that he didn’t have lymphoma but instead had thyroid cancer. “It wasn’t until I had a biopsy that they realised I had thyroid cancer, which is a much more treatable cancer,” he says. “So in a way it was a relief. Once you’ve got a diagnosis you can focus on how to tackle it. For me it was the not knowing that was the worst.”
During a gruelling nine-hour operation, Billy had his thyroid removed. At the same time surgeons removed 101 lymph nodes for testing to see if the cancer had spread. Of those, around a third had been infected. And following the success of the surgery, Billy was given a round of radioactive iodine treatment. “I had ‘radio iodine’ therapy where I had to take a radioactive iodine capsule and lie in a lead-lined room for three days.
“The thyroid cells live on iodine, so they eat it and it kills any microscopic cancer that’s left.”
Billy admits it was a lonely time. “The room had a stable door so people could visit for a short amount of time but I wasn’t able to really go near anyone for days,” he says. “It was pretty intense.”
He finished the treatment in August 2017 and now has check-ups every three months at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.
After a year, doctors couldn’t find any detectable traces of cancer.
“The doctors are pleased and I feel really good,” he says.
The thyroid produces hormones, which regulate how quickly the body’s processes happen. Without one, Billy will have to take medication for the rest of his life.
“The nerves in my throat were damaged so I had quite a low squeaky voice for about a month after the operation and had to go for voice therapy, but it came back absolutely fine,” he adds.
After his treatment, Billy is determined to remain positive.
“I’ve always been a fairly joyful character, which hasn’t changed. I think you’ve got to be an optimist rather than a pessimist.”
His only regret is that he didn’t have the lump on his neck checked sooner. “If I’d gone earlier I’d have needed a much less drastic operation,” he says.
“You live and learn and now I try not be as stoic as you might otherwise be as a chap.”
● Billy is running the London Landmarks half marathon to raise money for Cancer Research UK. To donate, visit justgiving.com/ fundraising/the-master-bakers