Channel 10 star Barry Du Bois reveals harrowing moment he was given ‘three months to live'
The father of two was first diagnosed in 2010 with solitary plasmacytoma, a rare form of blood cancer.
That diagnosis later progressed to myeloma in 2017, which is an incurable cancer that affects the immune system and attacks bone marrow.
'I was sitting in a cold, unfamiliar consult room at the hospital, my wife's hand holding mine … then a doctor who had known me for only a few hours looked me in the eye and told me I had three months to live,' he penned in letter for The Gold Coast Bulletin, recalling his earlier diagnosis.
It wasn't the first time the presenter has had to deal with medical setbacks.
He had previously broken his back after falling 14 metres from a roof, and later went through years of failed IVF treatment with his wife, Leonie, which included a miscarriage and her own cancer diagnosis just two weeks later.
He credits all those personal battles to his ongoing cancer fight, continuing to spend as much time with his beloved family as possible.
'When I got my diagnosis – incurable cancer, three months to live – I didn't fall apart … I knew that from leaning into the previous adversities of life I had the resilience to give the fight of my life,' Du Bois said.
But that hadn't always been the case. After his wife's miscarriage and cancer diagnosis, Du Bois initially struggled to find a way to go on.
'I avoided conversation and started a continual negative conversation with myself that took me into the darkness … depression is a lonely state and I refused to share my pain. I saw it as a weakness.'
But in the end his family helped to pull him through, and he's since used the positive outlook to give him the strength to keep going.
Du Bois first appeared on Aussie screens in 2011 as a contestant on The Renovators, before joining Amanda Keller, Dr Chris Brown and Miguel Maestre as a co-host on The Living Room.
He's been very vocal about his cancer journey over the last decade, regularly sharing inspiring updates and honest confessions on his social media platforms with fans as he continues to beat his initial devastating prognosis handed to him.
'I was overwhelmed with fear, uncertainty, and the unknown,' he said earlier this year of his diagnosis.
'But through it all, I realised something that I feel is why I am here today: It wasn't going to be cancer that defined me but the way I choose to approach it.'
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