Barry Du Bois: Aussie TV presenter reveals heartbreaking moment he was given ‘three months to live'
TV presenter Barry Du Bois has opened up about his ongoing battle with cancer, revealing in a moving letter that a doctor once told him he only had 'three months to live'.
Du Bois detailed the emotional moment he was sitting in a cold consultation room at St Vincent's Hospital, with his wife by his side, after ongoing a series of scans and biopsies.
'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 wrote in an essay published by the
Herald Sun
.
He said there were three doctors in the room when he heard the crushing news, but bravely told them, 'Thanks for your advice, but I'm not interested in that, and I'd rather you left the room.'
'You might not know the kind of will I have to live, but if you do your job, I'll do the rest.'
While that doctor's prognosis turned out to be wrong, Du Bois continues to live with Multiple Myleoma, an incurable type of blood cancer that affects the immune system and attacks the bone marrow.
In the letter, Du Bois recalled other times in his life where he has had to face 'heavy curve balls'.
He had previously fallen 14m off a roof, leaving him with a broken back and shattered leg, and later went through years of failed fertility treatment with his wife, Leonie, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer just two weeks after a miscarriage on their 12th round of IVF.
'When I got my diagnosis – incurable cancer, three months to live – I didn't fall apart.. I didn't make peace with that prognosis,' the Living Room presenter said.
'I knew that from leaning into the previous adversities of life I had the resilience to give the fight of my life.'
Du Bois first appeared on television screens in 2011 as a contestant on a renovating series before becoming a co-host on The Living Room, Amanda Keller, Dr Chris Brown and Miguel Maestre.
In 2012, Du Bois and Leonie welcomed two twins via surrogacy, calling it the most 'extraordinary moment' of his life.
'They are the reason I keep fighting, the reason I stay strong, the reason I smile every morning.'
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