Linda Nolan's brother has been diagnosed with cancer.
Linda Nolan's brother diagnosed with cancer
Just weeks after Linda, 65, succumbed to the disease, 20 years after she was first diagnosed, her beloved brother Brian Nolan, 69, has revealed he recently received his own diagnosis of level two prostate cancer.
Brian - who is the fifth Nolan sibling to have cancer - told The Mirror: "I just want cancer to leave us alone.
"You’re never ready for somebody to say: ‘Yes, you’ve got cancer’. It’s like being hit by a train. You start plunging into the abyss of: ‘I’m going to die’. The urologist stood up and said ‘We’re going to treat this and we’re going to cure this’. I’m focusing on that and hope to God I can have the courage my sisters had.”
Their sister, 'Loose Women' star Coleen, was devastated to find out another sibling was sick.
She said: "I couldn’t speak. I went completely numb and about an hour later I wanted to punch walls and scream. In our family, cancer’s just there. But he was so positive and I’m just so proud of him.
"We’re a family that treat everything with as much humour as possible and we go ‘OK, we can face this together.’ That’s what we’ll do.”
While Brian has received the good news that his cancer has not spread, he admitted the dual blow of losing Linda and getting his diagnosis has affected him hugely.
He said: "I had a bad moment yesterday just driving the car. I had a terrible moment about Linda. Linda and Bernie were forces of nature. Even when Linda was on her Zimmer frame she was still feisty. To lose people like that is really difficult.”
The family lost sibling Bernie to breast cancer in 2013 aged 52, before Linda died earlier this year.
Anne, 74, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000 and Coleen, 60, received a skin cancer diagnosis in 2023.
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