ITV presenter Dan Salisbury-Jones has revealed his wife has been diagnosed with a rare and incurable brain tumour.
The broadcaster revealed that the heartbreaking news came not long after Liz gave birth to their first child, Reuben, and the loved-up couple bought a house.
‘Life was very good back in 2022. Liz had given birth to our first baby, I’d got this exciting new job in the Midlands and we had found a house that was to become our family home,’ he said.
Dan ‘had an odd sense that all was going too well’, and Liz suffered a ‘petrifying’ seizure as they were packing at the end of a trip to visit family in Teesside last December.
‘My wife was just looking through me like there was nothing there. I really wish I knew that was normal because at the time I thought the worst,’ he recalled.
‘Eventually, she started recognising people and rediscovering her memory as we made our way to the hospital.’
A CT scan revealed a mass on her brain, with doctors telling the couple it was ‘either an infection or a tumour’.
Dan added in his release via The Brain Tumour Charity: ‘She was admitted and put on a drip for several days spending Christmas on a general/diabetic ward at a hospital with no neurological department.’
She was later diagnosed with a low-grade Oligodendroglioma, which is a rare and incurable tumour, at the age of 30.
While it is slow-growing and she should get to watch their son grow up, the risk of seizures mean she isn’t able to look after Reuben on her own.
The Brain Tumour Charity has given hope to sports correspondent Dan and his family, and he heaped praise on The Christie Hospital for their support.
He said: ‘Liz was 30 at the time and because of her age and relatively good prognosis, her oncologist also requested she get state-of-the-art proton beam therapy at The Christie in Manchester.
‘This was six weeks of daily treatment Monday to Friday. The Christie offered free accommodation in the city centre, but we were able to stay with family. The kindness we’ve found on this journey has been incredible.’
Liz began her treatment, along with anti-epilepsy drugs, back in May and this meant she lost some of her hair.
Thankfully, though, the treatment was successful and led to ‘significant shrinkage in the tumour.’
‘Then it was time for PCV Chemotherapy. We are now midway through the second cycle and Liz is handling it like a trooper. There are some strict dietary requirements, which are quite confusing to start with but not that bad once you get your head around it,’ Dan explained.
‘The last year of childbirth, brain surgery and chemotherapy really has driven home how much of a wimp I am compared to Liz. No complaints, she just gets on with it!
‘Meanwhile, I expected to find sport more trivial but actually the opposite has happened. It reminded me of how important it is for so many people and what an escape it is.’
The presenter lost his mum to breast cancer when he was just nine years of age, so now he’s determined to break the ‘taboo’ around cancer, insisting that we ‘need to move past that.’
Macmillan cancer support
If you or someone you care about has been diagnosed with cancer, Macmillan can offer support and information.
You can contact their helpline on 0808 808 00 00 (7 days a week from 8am to 8pm), use their webchat service, or visit their site for more information.
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