ITV star emotional as she details young son's liver cancer battle
An ITV star has emotionally opened up about her young son's liver cancer battle in a heartfelt discussion.
The regular panellists such as Ruth Langsford and Nadia Sawalha were replaced on Wednesday's Loose Women with a selection of TV doctors.
The likes of Dr Hilary Jones, Dr Zoe Williams, Dr Amir Khan and Dr Nighat Arif had made regular appearances on Lorraine and This Morning for various segments, but ran the whole show on Loose Women today, retitled Loose Doctors.
Among heartfelt chats, including Dr Hilary talking about his hip replacement recovery and Dr Amir candidly opening up about his mum's brain tumour, Dr Nighat bravely shared her son's diagnosis.
'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,' she began.
'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.
'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.'
She went on: '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.
'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.'
Holding back tears, Dr Nighat went on: '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.
'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 revealed that while she was going through such a difficult time in her life, she 'didn't cry', and was trying to stay strong for her family as the only Doctor.
'They were really dark and difficult times,' she added.
Loose Women airs weekdays from 12.30pm on ITV1 and ITVX.
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