Rachael Bland’s husband has revealed their three-year-old son’s heartbreaking words to him in the days after her death.
The Radio 5 Live presenter, 40, of Knutsford, Cheshire, died on September 5 after a battle with a rare form of aggressive breast cancer.
She captured the hearts of the nation, who shared her laughter and tears on her emotional fight with the disease, through her podcast and blog series You, Me and The Big C and Big C. Little Me.
Her husband Steve was interviewed on the first podcast of You, Me and The Big C since her death to discuss how he and little Freddie have coped.
Speaking to her co-hosts Lauren Mahon and Deborah James, Mr Bland revealed when he burst into tears after his wife’s death, their son said: ‘Daddy, don’t worry, it’s just two know, It’ll be OK.’
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Rachael Bland is pictured with her husband Steve. She died of a rare form of aggressive breast cancer in September after documenting her battle with the disease in a podcast and blog
Her husband Steve (pictured with her and son Freddie) was interviewed on the first podcast of You, Me and The Big C since her death to discuss how he and little Freddie have coped
He continued: ‘There have been occasions where I’ve lost my temper with him and I know I wouldn’t have done in normal circumstances.
‘I shouted at him because he was being a right pain, (I was) trying to get him dressed. I started crying because it really upset me that I’d shouted at him.
‘And he just turned to me and he said, ‘Daddy, are you crying because of Mummy?’ and I said ‘Yes’. And he said, ‘Daddy, don’t worry, it’s just us two now. It’ll be OK’.’
In the podcast, released today, Mr Bland admitted neither he or is wife ‘understood just how tough those last few days were going to be’.
He said if they had realised the difficulty, Bland may have opted to go to a hospice rather than staying at home.
Bland is pictured with her three-year-old son Freddie before her death in September
Bland (pictured with husband Steve and son Freddie) who died of breast cancer aged 40, documented her battle with the disease in a podcast and blog series called You, Me and The Big C
He said: ‘I might be wrong but I just feel that if Rachael had known how hard it was going to be, she might have wanted to go into a hospice or something else.
‘I just don’t know that either of us understood just how tough those last days were going to be – how demanding on her it was, only having me looking after her, and how demanding it was on me.’
Mr Bland said the ‘media storm’ around his wife’s death was ‘very difficult’ while also ‘comforting’, adding the Bland who appeared on television was not the same person ‘who sat next to me on the sofa watching crappy TV’.
Asked how he is coping since his wife died, Mr Bland said: ‘I’m OK. Good days and bad days, as you can imagine. Plenty of challenges. You don’t really know how you’re going to be when something like this happens.’
Speaking about Freddie, Mr Bland added: ‘He’s brilliant – he’s a bit young really to understand even on a very base level what’s happened.
‘But he’s just full of energy, full of joy, full of life, keeping us busy – he’s fantastic.
‘You can’t look at him without seeing Rachael either so it’s a little bit of her all the time just next to me.’
This is the last picture Rachael Bland posted on Twitter. It shows her (right) giggling with Radio 5 Live co-hosts and fellow cancer patients Lauren Mahon (centre) and Deborah James (left)
‘Putting the Can in Cancer’: Rachael Bland’s battle with deadly disease
Rachael Bland is pictured in hospital about to undergo chemotherapy
November 22 2016: Rachael Bland is diagnosed with primary triple-negative breast cancer that had spread to four lymph nodes under her right arm
December 28 2016: She begins four and a half months of chemotherapy
May 2017: She has a lumpectomy and auxillary node clearance
July 2017: The mother-of-one undergoes a mastectomy
August 2017: Bland has a re-excision of her lumpectomy and starts 15 sessions of radiotherapy
October 2017: CT and biopsy shows cancer had spread to the lymph nodes under her arm on the opposite side to the primary cancer
May 2018: She is told the cancer is terminal and she has ‘less than a year to live’
September 2018: Bland announces she has just days to live in a poignant social media post and dies on September 5.
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