BBC’s Nick Robinson: Losing my voice scared me more than cancer
IT began as a routine review of Nick robinson’s asthma after he began coughing and wheezing more than usual.
Then the BBC political editor mentioned to his consultant that he had lost weight – and was immediately sent for a scan. Within weeks came the bombshell that he had cancer.
In a moving account, which tells how he was diagnosed in the run-up to the General Election, the 51-year-old father of three revealed that he shed ‘ hot, shoulder-shaking tears’ after telling his bosses that he would beat the disease and swiftly return to the job he loves.
He said: ‘I spell out my ludicrously simple agenda: I will have the tumour cut out and get back to work three weeks later. Then I pause and think and cry – hot, shoulder- shaking tears. If I don’t believe what I’m saying, what on earth can they be thinking?’ The account serves as a rare insight into the anguish Mr robinson faced in an otherwise upbeat, inspirational and often wry account of his battle with the disease.
He has even admitted that he was more worried about losing his voice than getting rid of the tumour.
His asthma consultant sent him for a scan back in February when he said he had treated himself to a new slim-fit Paul Smith suit after going down a belt size. Five days later, a CT scan showed a shadow on his lung.
He found out that it was a tumour on Valentine’s Day, minutes after he arrived for a half-term skiing holiday with his sons and his wife Pippa. He waved his wife over and told her he would need a biopsy as soon as he got home.
In his account he writes: ‘She looks numb. But for now the priority is to keep going. Don’t spoil the holiday. Don’t assume the worst.’ Eleven days later it was confirmed he had a rare form of cancer, a bronchial carcinoid tumour – described by Mr robinson, a non-smoker, as ‘a slower-growing, nicer sort of tumour which is “fixable”’.
The next day he told BBC bosses and his teenage sons Will and Harry, and the day after went to Oxford with his wife to tell their daughter Alice, a student.
‘Concern, sympathy, smiles and then the gossip about college life. Just what the doctor ordered,’ he said. The account is contained in his new book, Election Notebook: The Inside Story Of The Battle Over Britain’s Future And My Personal Battle To report It. After a successful operation to remove the tumour at the royal Brompton Hospital in London, Mr robinson could ‘ barely speak a whisper’ as the nerve to a vocal cord had taken a ‘bit of a battering’ during the procedure. ‘I am assured that this is far from unheard of with this surgery. It is, though, for me, a disaster,’ he said in the book, serialised by the Mail on Sunday.
‘While I might well be able to get myself fit enough to go back to work in time for the Election, no one will be able to hear a word I say. Everyone keeps telling me that my health is more important than any story. Of course it is. But it was the prospect of fighting my way back for this General Election that was keeping me going. Now I am confronting the possibility not just of missing it, but of never broadcasting again.’
He then saw a speech therapist who would help him on the road to repairing his voice. ‘We’d been acquainted for only a few minutes before Pippa confided something she knew I hadn’t dared reveal to anyone else: I was more scared to be told I’d lost my voice than that I had cancer. My voice is no mere tool. It is who I am. Without spoken words, I am nothing.’
Mr robinson was told the cancer had not spread in March after a scan. He said: ‘There can be no certainties, but this is the best possible outcome. Our joy is unalloyed and overwhelming.’
‘For now the priority is to keep going’