ITV star recalls 'dark and difficult times' after young son's cancer diagnosis

Daily Record

a day ago

The star appeared on Loose Women and bravely shared her young son's diagnosis.
An ITV star has shared a poignant account of her young son's struggle with liver cancer during an emotional segment.
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On Wednesday's edition of Loose Women, the usual hosts like Ruth Langsford and Nadia Sawalha stepped aside for a special panel of television doctors.
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The show, rebranded as Loose Doctors for the day, featured familiar faces such as Dr Hilary Jones, Dr Zoe Williams, Dr Amir Khan, and Dr Nighat Arif, who are known for their segments on Lorraine and This Morning but took centre stage to run the entire programme.
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In a series of moving conversations, which included Dr Hilary discussing his hip replacement recovery and Dr Amir opening up about his mother's brain tumour, Dr Nighat courageously disclosed her son's health condition.
She started by saying: "It's taken me a very long time to openly talk about it and discuss it because it was so personal for such a long time," reports the Mirror.
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Revealing the challenges they faced, she explained: "When my second son was born, he had a rare liver condition, liver cirrhosis, and that rare liver condition meant that his liver just stopped working."
Dr Nighat then recounted the harrowing prognosis given to her: "I was told that he was going to have a 50% chance of getting liver cancer and that if we don't make it in time then he's not going to have a good outcome at the end of this or he'd go on a transplant list."
Continuing her story, she said, "We were talking about Googling symptoms, I became Mama Bear. I knew nothing about liver disease - even though I'm a doctor - I knew very little about the transplant world or about this rare condition that he had, so I was that mum Googling away.
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"So I have such great empathy for people that when they're told something, the first thing they want to do is go and have a look at it and find out, and that's where I found other families who were going through a similar situation to me and that authenticity really resonated with me at that time.
"My son unfortunately, being from a Black and Asian community, at that time, we were told we'd wait five times longer on the transplant list."
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Fighting back tears, Dr Nighat continued: "He did unfortunately get liver cancer, he got hepatocellular carcinoma, and then we were waiting and waiting and waiting for the transplant, and I was then telling the whole family to get tested, I was ready to be donating myself as a family member, and then unfortunately up in Leeds there was a little boy, they don't tell you the details, all we know about the donor family is that he fell off his bike, hit the back of his head and had a clean brain stem injury.
"His parents, these incredible heroes of ours who I have no idea who they are, they donated their child's organs and one of them was my son, so he's a recipient of the liver.
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"Afterwards, he ended up having eight operations, six rounds of chemo, three hickman line operations, three hospital stays, I totally was not the clinician I am today for about three years, and now he's ten years old.
"He swims for Swim England on the dive team, the donor family are our heroes but also the time when I really was able to empathise with our patients."
Dr Nighat disclosed that during this challenging period, she "didn't cry", maintaining her composure for her family as the sole Doctor.
"They were really dark and difficult times," she further acknowledged.