Davina McCall has confessed she was “so angry” about her brain tumour diagnosis.
In November, the popular presenter shocked fans when she announced that she was having surgery to remove a benign tumour from her brain.
The 57-year-old broadcaster revealed that she had a “very rare” colloid cyst – which only affects three out of every million people.
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Davina spoke to Steven Bartlett on her podcast Begin Again, that after having a scan she was told that it was an uncommon type of tumour, one that “very, very rarely” can “cause sudden death.”
She said: “I felt like this thing had taken control of me and I was so angry about that. I couldn’t… I couldn’t let it go. (I thought) ‘How dare you control my daily life like this and make me feel every day like I’m in danger?’”
“I have newfound enormous sympathy for people who have benign brain tumours. Because you think… I have had so many people say to me: ‘Well, at least it was benign.’ And you think: ‘You have no idea that benign brain tumours can still kill you.’”
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“It’s just, you don’t know when it’s going to happen. It could happen tomorrow, it could happen in years’ time. It’s different to cancer, but it is also awful. A benign does not mean fine.”
“Living with that uncertainty is pretty terrifying. I know enough now to know that, look, I am healthy. I look after myself. I exercise.”
“I’ve got all of these things going for me, but stress is a killer. And I want to de-stress my life. I do not want to live with the stress of thinking any minute, you know, I could be taken out by something.”
It was never “unfair,” Devina added, but she “seriously believes wholeheartedly that somewhere in my genetic makeup, this was in my stars from birth, in my brain at birth.”
In addition, she stated that although the experience has “not changed me forever, I’ve learnt things about myself that I would never have learnt without this operation.”
She also stated that she believes she will consider it “one of the greatest blessings of my life” in two years.
The host added that she gave her tumour the name “Jeffrey” because she doesn’t have any pals with that name.
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In December, Davina got emotional as she made her first public appearance since her brain surgery.
The 57-year-old attended a gathering at All Saints Church in Fulham to support her neurosurgeon, Kevin O’Neill.
Making a speech at the event, she joked: “I’m crying already, that didn’t go well.”
“I know lots of you here are on your own brain tumour journey and many of you have lost loved ones to a brain tumour.”
“I lost my sister to a brain tumour in 2012 and my ex-father-in-law a year ago.”
