BBC News presenter Victoria Derbyshire candidly revealed that she wrote her sons a goodbye letter over fears she would not wake up from her mastectomy in 2015.
The hard-hitting broadcaster, 56, underwent the surgery following a breast cancer diagnosis but was racked with fear that she would not wake up from the anaesthetic, leaving her sons without a mother. Speaking about the harrowing moment, Victoria appeared on an episode of Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast, hosted by Giovanna Fletcher.
The pair had met on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! in 2020. Victoria said her 11 year old son Oliver was "angry" after he was told about her diagnosis, while her eight year old son Joe said it was a "stressful" time. The presenter said: "I had this really weird anxiety, maybe it’s rational, that I wasn’t going to wake up after the anaesthetic so I wrote each of them a goodbye letter – in case I didn’t wake up.
She continued: "Obviously I was going to wake up, because a million people have anaesthetic every day and wake up, but that was the thing that was making me most nervous. It wasn’t losing a breast – that was fine, get the cancer out – but what if I don’t see my boys again."
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BBC)She added: "So I wrote them letters, which I put in my bedside drawer. Mark knew where they were in case that would happen. It was how much I love them, ‘and please remember your manners and will you make sure you’re kind to people’. All the stuff I say every day anyway, I just wanted it on paper, just so they’d have it."
Following her diagnosis and treatment to deal with the disease, she married her partner Mark Sandell. In September Victoria revealed she was abused by her father Anthony. She recalled that during her childhood he once threw hot soup over her and also put his hands around her neck. The abuse also included being beaten with a wooden spoon and a belt.
Victoria claimed that her father also turned his abuse on her mother and once broke her rib. The abuse became so bad, when her father would return home, she and her siblings would run to their rooms. Her father passed away four years ago. The presenter made the admission to the Independent.
She said: "He got me up against the pantry door, his hands around my neck. My best friend was there, shouting at him to get off me. I just looked at him with contempt in my eyes. He could see it. I didn't say anything, I didn’t scream. I just got up, went to the sink and washed it off. It was my way of trying to show that he wasn't affecting me."
She made it known that her father didn't have a problem with alcohol but it later emerged that he had been abused by his father. Speaking about the time her mother's rib was broken she said the doctor's note simply said "husband trouble. In a desperate bid to escape their abusive treatment, Victoria's mum took her children to live with her sister Pauline before returning home a while later.
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