Fans of Trisha Goddard were left saddened in February when she revealed exclusively in HELLO! that she has cancer.
Despite her diagnosis, 66-year-old Trisha continued to work, as she wanted to keep her life as normal as possible, but undergoing chemotherapy while holding down a job ended up being a struggle.
Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain about why she "kept it quiet", Trisha said: "I was grappling with how to deal with it myself. Plus I just wanted to work and be me.
"With CNN and my colleagues there, they didn’t know that I had no hair, that I had no feeling in my legs – from the treatment, because I had chemo every week for four and a half months."
Sharing a story about hiding her chemotherapy side effects, Trisha explained: "Don Lemon and I were on air, and he went (pointing to her nose), 'Nose, nose, nose,' because of chemo you get these nose bleeds and so I quickly wiped it up and I said to my husband afterwards, 'I'm mortified, Don saw me have this nose bleed' and he said, 'Oh, it's all right, honey, he probably just thinks you're one of these high flyers who was doing coke all night'."
While Trisha's cancer in incurable, she is undergoing treatment, but she said she does not want to be the 'poster girl', explaining: "It's not who I am, it's what I'm living with.
"And coming back to people with chronic illnesses, I think we do them a disservice when we use words like 'brave', 'champion', 'hero', 'survivor', because they just want to grasp the life they have, and drink life unto the lees.
"And I don't want everything to be 'Oh, you look so good', in brackets 'considering you’ve got cancer'."
Trisha's cancer journey
In 2008, Trisha was diagnosed with, and recovered from, breast cancer.
Just over two years ago, she discovered that the disease had returned, this time to her bones, specifically her right hip.
READ: Trisha Goddard faces fears on belated Bahamas honeymoon amid cancer treatment
She has been diagnosed with secondary breast cancer – also known as metastatic or stage 4 breast cancer – for which there is treatment, but no cure.
"It's not going to go away," she told HELLO! "And with that knowledge comes grief, and fear. But I must keep enjoying what I have always enjoyed."
At the time of sharing the sad news, Trisha said her decision to speak publicly about her illness was, in part, to relieve the strain of keeping it to herself. "I can't lie; I can't keep making up stories," she says. "It gets to a stage, after a year and a half, when keeping a secret becomes more of a burden than anything else.
"I'm nervous," she adds. "But it needed to be done."
