Presenter Julia Bradbury has opened up about her emotional experience of being diagnosed with breast cancer.
The 51-year-old revealed what the considered to be the ‘hardest thing’ about her cancer journey as she talked to Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on This Morning.
Julia appeared on the ITV show ahead of a new documentary set to be shown on the channel tonight, April 28, which follows Julia in the wake of her cancer diagnosis.
The former Countryfile and Watchdog presenter announced last September that she needed urgent surgery after being diagnosed with breast cancer, and is currently still undergoing treatment.
Julia spoke about how difficult it was to tell her family about her diagnosis, the Liverpool Echo reports.
Speaking of Julia's children, Phil asked: "What was it like telling them?"
Julia replied: "Telling your children you have cancer is the hardest thing you'll ever have to do in your life. You also don't quite know how much to tell them to be realistic and how much you need to protect them as well. It's a really tricky balance. I don't think any parent really knows exactly what to do."
The presenter revealed that she had put off telling her mother about her diagnosis at first.
She said: "I delayed telling my mum because she is a Greek, loving, gorgeous, warm parent who has tried to protect us. Even to this day I still have to phone her when I get somewhere. That's the kind of mum she is. I knew that if I told her 'look, I've got a lump, they've done a biopsy and it's cancer' then she would want to know oh what's happening next.
"She would definitely want to come and live and move in with me straight away. I knew it would be a huge worry for her at that bit of the journey, so I wanted to get to the stage where I knew what kind of cancer it was and I knew what treatment it was going to be and I knew what my chances of recovery were going to be so I could genuinely sit down with her and tell her all of the information that I knew so that she wasn't worrying along with me."
Host Holly was moved to tears when a clip from the documentary, Julia Bradbury: Breast Cancer and Me, was played on the programme as Julia told of being reunited with her kids after surgery.
The film will follow Julia both before and after her mastectomy, seeing her family through the process of physical and psychological recovery, as well as meeting other families facing similar struggles.
Julia said: "I wanted to make this documentary to help spread awareness about this pervasive disease that now affects one in seven women. There was so much I didn’t know about breast cancer before my diagnosis and I hope this helps highlight the complexities of our individual cases, as well as exploring some of the incredible support networks that are out there and the new science and knowledge that continues to evolve."
She added: "The impact of a cancer diagnosis goes way beyond the initial devastating news and the ripple effect on those close to you is crushing.”
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