Dan Walker in horror cancer scare that saw head double in size and body bloat so severely he couldn’t wear clothes
DAN Walker has revealed how he was told he had cancer while covering the European football championships in Poland.
The former BBC Breakfast and Match of the Day presenter, now a Channel 5 early evening news journalist, said he had a traumatic night in a Polish hospital wondering if he was going to die.
Dan revealed he was pumped with eight litres of saline solution after his kidneys almost stopped working and his head doubled in size – while he had to walk around naked because his body was so bloated he could not get his boxer shorts on.
Walker said he looked like the Marshmallow Man from the film Ghostbusters.
Talking about his terror in 2012, Walker, 46, said he is forever grateful to his colleague Richard Hughes for helping him through the awful night.
He said: “I was in Poland a few years ago covering the European Championships and I had a slightly strange lump in my stomach.
“My breathing was changing a little bit and I went to the medical centre in the broadcast centre there, and within two and a half minutes I was in the back of an ambulance on my way to a Polish A&E.
“And a guy called Richard Hughes, who is the editor of Match of the Day now, and a guy I’d worked with for many years, he dropped everything and came with me.
“You know times in life when you think sometimes you need someone to hold your hand.
“It did get a bit scary that night – about two o’clock in the morning a Polish consultant came in and told me that I had cancer because they’d seen some shadows on my kidney. He used the word tumour.”
Dan said he and Richard had a fixer with them who spoke Polish and English and asked her to confirm he had understood the doctor right.
She replied to him: “He thinks you’ve got cancer in your kidney.”
Recalling the moment, Dan said he told himself: “Ok, let’s process this, what do I do about that, do I ring my family, do I ring my wife?”
He continued: “And I just talked to Richard about it and he was brilliant and was really calm. He’s very wise and daft and lovely and he was brilliant that night.”
Dan asked doctors if the head consultant could look at his scan so he was 100% sure he had cancer before breaking the news to his family back home.
“At eight o’clock in the morning she came in straight away and she said ‘I’ve got good news, it’s not a tumour’,” Walker revealed.
Dan said he will be forever grateful to his colleague for supporting him during the scary ordeal.
“When we see each other I think ‘Richard, whatever you need from me at any stage in life, I will always deliver the goods because you were there when I needed you’.”T
Speaking on White Wine Question Time, he added that it eventually turned out to be a debilitating serious virus he was battling.
He said: “There were a series of black shadows on my kidneys. Because they went down to about 30 per cent functionality, so I had this weird sort of virus that had really affected them.
“It’s such a strange night because they then came in and they pumped eight litres of saline fluid into my body to try and get my kidney to start again.
“The next day they let me go home, they gave me drugs to line my stomach and these really heavy drugs to try and get the kidneys started again.
“The next day I woke up and I went to the bathroom mirror – my face, my head was about twice the size that it is at the moment.
“Every part of my body was swollen and I couldn’t even get my boxer shorts on. I was walking around naked, I couldn’t get my pants on because my body was so bloated with this water that wasn’t being processed.
“I was like the shape of Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters.
After about 48 hours Dan’s kidneys started working again and he returned to his normal size.