Loose Women star Coleen Nolan has revealed she is ‘always checking’ for signs of cancer after it ravaged her family.
The 59-year-old started her career in the public eye as a member of the pop group The Nolans, in which she sang with her sisters.
She then went on to join the ITV panel show Loose Women in 2000 and has also appeared on Dancing on Ice and Celebrity Big Brother.
However, over the years her family has been massively impacted by several cancer diagnosis.
Her sister Linda, 65, was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, which later returned in 2017 when she was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer in her hip, which has since spread to her liver and brain.
Another sister, Anne, now 73, also battled breast cancer in 2000 and 2020, while sister Bernie died from the disease aged just 52 in 2013.
Opening up about the impact of the disease on her family, Coleen said she checks for signs of it every day, terrified she could be next.
‘We have had so much heartache… I’m always checking. I still have this thing when I think, “What if I have missed it?”,’ she said.
‘Really, from Linda, it became a big thing for me,’ Coleen continued, referencing her sister whose current diagnosis is terminal.
‘Whenever I’m in the shower, I will have a good feel and check. And if there is ever a time when I think “I don’t like that”, I will go to the doctor straight away. And they will say “It’s fine, it’s a little cyst or an infection”,’ she added when speaking to The Mirror.
‘But it’s obviously in our family. I hope I don’t get it, but I just want to think that if I do, I’ll get it early. Linda put off going way too long. And she admits that now. She didn’t go straight away, so by the time they found it… it was huge.’
Coleen now pays for regular appointments with a breast specialist in addition to her NHS mammogram every two years.
Reflecting on the family’s first cancer diagnosis, Coleen shared how Anne managed to avoid a mastectomy as she ‘always picked it up early’.
However, when it came to Bernie, Coleen had a ‘impending sense she wasn’t going to make it’ after questioning if the family could be ‘three times lucky’ after Anne and Linda’s diagnosis’.
Last year Linda said she’d been ‘preparing for the worse’ after the disease spread to her brain but had been thankful to make it to Christmas.
Coleen also had a cancer scare of her own in 2023 after undergoing treatment for a type of low-grade skin cancer called carcinoma, which was found on her shoulder.
She was told it would grow into melanoma – the deadliest form of skin cancer – if ignored, however it luckily didn’t develop any further.
Loose Women airs weekdays from 12.30pm on ITV1.
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