Homes Under the Hammer star and veteran gardener Tommy Walsh has candidly spoken about his ongoing battle with lung cancer. The 67 year old is currently undergoing pioneering radiation treatment on the NHS designed to accurately target cancer cells.
The gardening expert issued a health update and revealed the cancer cells have begun to shrink following the treatment as he remained hopeful they will eventually “disappear”.
He revealed: “My cancer came back earlier this year….they found it again under the lung.”
Elaborating on his treatment, Tommy added: “So I had to have this new treatment called SABR and what it is is radiotherapy which targets it to an exact spot without damaging the organs around it. So they used that and it shrunk. It is now not anywhere else. It is going away. Because it is shrinking it will shrink down to nothing and disappear. I will then just have to have annual checks. It has worked for me really well.”
The TV personality felt fortunate that the tumour was detected “just outside his lung”, explaining: “They thought it was in the lung and then I would have been in trouble. Surgery would have been serious where they cut you open and take a big lump of bone out of the rib and then they would have to put a piece of metal mesh in to stop the lung falling out of the hole.”
Expressing relief, he said: “So I did not want but we had that as a backup. The SABR treatment has worked and I am healthy so I have not been in any pain,” reports the Mirror.
Moreover, Tommy didn’t hesitate to show his support for the NHS over private healthcare and admitted he wouldn’t want to go anywhere else for his treatment.
The Ground Force presenter opened up about having a third cancer scare after doctors found a “three-centimetre tumour” in his lung, it has now emerged.
The builder and TV personality, best known for hosting the BBC’s garden makeover show from 1997 to 2005, shared the news with audience members at a charity event last November.
At the time of his diagnosis, Tommy had not provided any further updates about the results of his follow-up scan.
Speaking at the conference on 27 November, he said: “I have an emergency appointment at 9am tomorrow morning back in London. I had a chest infection, had to go to the doctor and they sent me up to the hospital for a CT scan and they think there’s a three-centimetre tumour in the lung.”
He previously discovered two benign lumps on his chest in 2002 and underwent surgery to have them removed.
The Homes Under the Hammer host has a family history of the disease; his sister reportedly underwent a lumpectomy to remove cancerous breast tissue when she was 31.