Linda Nolan has been diagnosed with cancer again.
The 58-year-old singer – who had been clear of breast cancer for six years – was found to have a cyst on her pelvis after she fell and broke her hip earlier this month, and though she has been told the condition is not curable this time round, doctors are able to treat her and she could still have "years" to live.
Linda’s younger sister, 52-year-old Coleen Nolan, broke the news on her TV show ‘Loose Women’ today (27.03.17) in order to put an end to speculation about her own absence from the show.
Fighting back tears, she said: "It’s difficult to know where to start but about two and a half weeks ago, as you know my sister Linda had an accident at home, where she fell up the stairs and she broke her hip. She went to hospital and when they did the scan of her hip they found secondary cancer.
"They found a cyst attached to where the break was, on her pelvis, so it was just, earth-shattering for us initially.
"She’s incredible and what they have said is – and the reason I didn’t come back, was she didn’t want anybody to know at the time.
"But she wanted me to come back now, she didn’t want me sitting round.
"Because she saw the speculation about why I was off – which wasn’t true – she didn’t want people to start speculating about her and I didn’t want to come back and lie and sit here and say, ‘Everything’s great’ so with her blessing she wanted me to talk about it today.
"The positive thing is, although it is not curable, it is treatable and it hasn’t spread anywhere else. Linda wants to get it across she isn’t dying of cancer because it is treatable and she could have years, so we have to focus on that."
The stress of the situation also saw Coleen – whose sister Bernie died of cancer in 2013 – suffer a painful allergic reaction, but she insists she doesn’t want people to feel sorry for.
As a photo of her swollen and red face flashed on screen, she explained: "Because of all that, I got a stress-related allergy, so I got taken to hospital because they were frightened with anaphylactic shock and I thought, ‘Nobody wants to see that on the telly.’
"I’m not sitting here saying feel sorry for me because Linda is going through a lot more stress, physically and mentally than me."
And the Nolan family have vowed to unite to cope with Linda’s ordeal as a unit.
Coleen said: "We messaged each other and said, I remember getting a message from my older brother saying, ‘Oh God, here we go again, but we’ll do it.’
"And we will, we’ll fight as a family, so if there’s weeks I’m not here because Linda and the family needs me, I’m very privileged to have a job where I can do that because some people don’t…
"Linda is obviously having terrible down days but the majority of the time, she texts as soon as she gets any information.
"I think the thing that broke my heart was she sent a text – it seems weird, but we’re such a big family – was at the end of it she put ‘I’m so sorry, I feel so guilty to put you all through this again’. We’ll all go through it together."
Linda Nolan diagnosed with cancer
