Nolans Sister Anne's health update after cancer battle - 'I don't want to die'
When a letter with an NHS stamp dropped on Anne Nolan 's doormat, she held her breath for a moment. It had been five years since she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time, then having to undergo surgery before enduring chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Every test since had been clear but fear consumed Anne, 74, and she pushed the letter to one side. She'd tragically lost sisters Bernie and Linda to the disease and the devastation of them no longer being around still cuts deep. 'If it was bad news, I don't know how I was going to handle it,' she admitted.
Eventually drumming up the courage and strength to find out her fate, the tears started rolling when Anne read she was officially cancer-free. 'It was great news,' she says. 'It said I was all clear and it hadn't spread anywhere else. I had a little cry. I was very emotional. I was just relieved more than anything and I felt so blessed and so happy.'
The happiness was tinged with sadness though, as Anne's thoughts turned to little sisters Linda and Bernie. 'Although I was absolutely thrilled, I did think about them,' she opened up. "I didn't feel guilty because it's nothing to do with me but I did feel sad that they weren't as lucky as I was. It's an emotional thing for me to think about them not surviving and then I did survive. But that's just the luck of the draw.'
Linda passed away in January. She was 65. Her initial cancer was in the breast which spread to other parts of her body. Bernie died in 2013 aged 52 of the same disease. Speaking from her Blackpool home, she said: 'I don't really like to hear when people say, 'You've fought your cancer' because it makes people who've died of cancer didn't fight hard enough. I think I've just been lucky. I always consider myself lucky when I look at my two sisters. Linda went through a terrible time and so did Bernie.'
Although her chemotherapy was gruelling, Anne says she fared better than those around her also battling the disease. Diagnosed with her first cancer in 2000 and her second 20 years later, both were caught early with treatment starting within two weeks both times. But her 2022 experience has left lasting scars on Anne's mental health.
'It was really awful,' she explained. 'I ended us having anxiety about dying. I've had to have tablets from the doctor for anxiety because of having cancer during COVID. I wasn't allowed to be with my family. I was in hospital for 11 days. And nobody could visit me except my sister-in-law and my brother-in-law both worked at the hospital. It was horrendous. I still have anxiety but it's not as bad. I have anxieties about dying. It is about the cancer coming back as well. That's why I didn't want to open the letter. I don't want to die, I love being alive. I love being here.'
Anne has a lot to live for. She beams when she talks about her two daughters - Amy, 44, and Alex, 37, and three grandchildren Vinny, 15, Ryder, 13, and Navaeh, 10. 'I want to see them grow up,' she pleads. 'My granddaughter plays football. I was watching the Lionesses in the Euros because I'm a massive football fan. And I'm thinking, 'God, if I live for another 10 years, Niamh might be playing for the Lionesses by the time.' That's what I keep thinking. Vinny plays football and Ryder plays guitar. Please let me live until they get older and they remember me and I can see what they're going to do with their lives.'
As one of the famous Nolan sisters, she's also got her close-knit family to lean on. She rose to fame when their band, made up of her Maureen, Linda, Denise, Bernie and Coleen with hits I'm In The Mood for Dancing and Gotta Pull Myself Together.
Anne says her ill health has made her want to live life to the max. 'When you've had a life-threatening disease and you've lost two sisters then it brings it all to the forefront,' she mused. 'It makes you value life. You grab everything with both hands. Whenever I'm asked to do something I say yes straight away. When you come through it and you're at the other end and you think, well I didn't die and I'm alive and I'm gonna live every day.'
Taking on that mantra, Anne is determined to tick some life plans off her extensive bucket list. It means for a busy few years, as she spells out her big plans 'I'd love to go and see the Vatican,' she smiles. 'I'd love to go to Nashville. I'd love to learn how to swim. I would love to learn a language, probably French or Spanish. And also learn an instrument. These are all the things I wished I had when I was younger.'
She's also planning a trip down to stay with Coleen at her six-acre Staffordshire farm - but says don't expect her to be mucking out the animals. 'Coleen's place is absolutely gorgeous - but it's not for me,' laughes Anne. 'I can clean my whole house in a couple of hours. And although I love animals, I'm not good with them. I'm scared of most animals. I'm scared of dogs and I'm scared of cats. When I go to Coleen's farm, I go and see the horses and the goats but I couldn't be left alone with them.'
She says her little sister is in her element there, and it's a joy to see. 'She absolutely loves it,' beams Anne. 'I remember when we were doing a tour with Frank Sinatra. Our opening night was in the Palais de Congress in Paris. She was nine at the time and we said to her, 'You can come with us with my mum and dad and then they can bring you home.' She said 'No I can't. I've got to muck out the horses at stables.' So from an early age she's always loved animals.'
Coleen once described the cancer that impacted their family so acutely as a 'curse'. The Loose Women favourite herself was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2023 and brother Brian was told he had prostate cancer three days after Linda's funeral. Anne says she feels 'really well' despite the toll her body has been through over the pass couple of decades.
'I've got no aches and pains," insists Anne. "I don't take any medication at all. Now and again I might take an anxiety tablet but I don't take them regularly. I have neuropathy which I got from my chemotherapy. I have that in my feet and it's more of a sensation rather than a pain. Sometimes it wakes me up in the night. I'm able to do most things. I do my own housework. It's good considering I've had cancer twice.'
Despite her all-clear, Anne says cancer will always be at the back of her mind. 'When you have cancer, it's one of those things that you kind of live with it for the rest of your life,' she says. 'You could kind of get a little bruise or a lump somewhere and you think, 'Oh my god, is that cancer?' It can always come back.
"I get scared as well, and this is really stupid, but both my cancers I found when I was in the shower. So now in the shower I'm inclined not to be as good at looking for things as I'm frightened of finding something. It's really stupid because the thing is if you've got cancer, it's not going to go away. So the more you leave it, the less chance you've got of curing it.'
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