Coleen Nolan has returned to Loose Women to reveal the devastating news that her sister Linda has been diagnosed with secondary cancer.
A visibly emotional Coleen admitted to her fellow panellists that making the announcement was extremely hard, saying: 'It's difficult to know where to start'.
'As you know my sister Linda had an accident at home where she fell up the stairs and actually broke her hip, which was all very "you’re alright, you’re alright".'
However, Coleen continued to explain that when doctors did a scan of Linda's hip, they found secondary cancer in her pelvis.
'They found a cyst attached to where the break was, I think it's attached to her pelvic bone,' Coleen explained. 'It was earth shattering for us initially.'
Linda has made appearances on the show herself in recent months
Coleen added that she'd returned to work because she wanted to put an end to speculation about why she'd been absent from the show, and to put the record straight on behalf of Linda, who previously revealed she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer back in 2006.
'The reason I didn't come back is she didn't want anyone to know, but she wanted me to come back now, she's had enough of sitting round, and she's not ready to talk about it yet, but because she's has to cancel all of her future work, she's just worried because she saw the speculation about why I was off, she didn't want people to start maybe speculating about her,' she said.
'With her blessing, she wanted me to talk about it today and say that's the reason.'
'The positive thing is although they've said it's not curable, but it's treatable, and it hasn't spread anywhere else. Obviously it's going to be compared to Bernie [the Nolan's sister, who sadly passed away from cancer in 2013], Linda wants it to get across that she's not dying of cancer she’s living with cancer. It's treatable, she could have years.'
'[Bernie] was in Linda's mind when they first said it, they said that to Bernie when she first had it and we did lose her but it's a different type of cancer and it hasn't spread.'
'She's being so strong, she has her down days don't get me wrong, but she's really positive.'
