Louis Walsh revealed he has been diagnosed with a rare cancer on Friday night's Celebrity Big Brother (March 15).
He was discussing the Coronavirus pandemic and lockdown with housemates Levi Roots and Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu when he made the admission. Explaining that he was 'sick,' the former X Factor judge said: "I think nobody knew I was sick. I had cancer – a mild version, a rare one, in my blood."
He continued: "I didn’t even know I had it until I went to the hospital. They checked me and then they found it.” The 71-year-old said it affected him mentally.
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Pointing to his head, he admitted: “It’s just up here, even when I go past a hospital I almost get sick. It’s all gone, I’m fine. It was just the shock of being sick and that word – nobody wants that word.
“I have it blocked out, a reality check. You see so many people sick and it’s terrible. In my world it was all about pop music and all that. I didn’t think of anybody getting sick or anything like that. And that was like, wow, reality check – you’re in the real world.”
Louis was diagnosed with waldenstrom macroglobulinaemia, which occurs when certain blood cells called plasma cells develop in an unusual way in the bone marrow. A slow-growing type of blood cancer, it is classed as a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Plasma cells are blood cells that release antibodies and help people fight infection.
It is not known what treatment Louis received, although sufferers often have chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Around 350 people in the UK are diagnosed with waldenstrom macroglobulinaemia each year.
Louis’s former X Factor co-star Sharon Osbourne, 71 – who exited the Celebrity Big Brother house after eight days – was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2002. It spread to her lymph nodes but she survived the disease after surgery.
Celebrity Big Brothers airs every night except Saturdays from 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.
