TV legend Cornelia Frances in fight for life after being diagnosed with cancer
SHE might have come to fame as the nasty nurse Sister Scott in 1970s soapie Young Doctors but TV legend Cornelia Frances has been having a real health drama as she battles cancer.
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SHE might have come to fame as the nasty nurse Sister Scott in 1970s soapie Young Doctors but TV legend Cornelia Frances has been having a real health drama as she battles cancer.
The 76-year-old star — who also played Barbara Hamilton in 1980s soapie Sons And Daughters, was a quiz show queen in The Weakest Link and still pops up as the “evil” Morag in Home and Away — has opened up about her health battles in 2017.
And she also revealed she came across an even meaner medico than her fictional character.
“I had only just come out of surgery, and dealing with a fractured hip, which hurt like hell, when this nurse came to my bed and said: ‘Get up and walk’! I thought: This is worse than Sister Scott,” Francis said with a hearty laugh.
“She wasn’t joking either. But I soon adopted my ‘Morag stance’ and politely put her in her place.
“It turned out she hadn’t checked my charts and was unaware I had just had surgery. Now, Sister Scott would never made such a careless mistake.”
But while she can laugh now, things were looking very serious at one point.
“I swear I have had a hex placed on me for the past 12 months,” she said.
“I discovered I had bladder cancer. This then spread to my hip bone which fractured, and then I almost died from loss of blood due to an ulcer in my throat. Despite all this, I am still here, as the old song goes.”
Frances said it is only thanks admits that if not for the work of some brilliant surgeons and the love of her son, Lawrence, she would never have made it.
“When I got the ulcer in my throat, I did truly believe that this time my luck had finally run out,” Frances said.
She was bleeding so heavily from the ulcer during surgery that things were touch and go.
“I was a total mess according to my surgeon. He told me he didn’t believe they could get me back from the brink but somehow they did,” she said.
Francis found out she had cancer when going for a general check-up and, ironically, she received the cancer news at Royal North Shore Hospital, which was used as the set for the fictional Albert Memorial Hospital in Young Doctors.
“I was told that I did indeed have cancer and it had metastasised to my pelvic bone. I just froze as I heard that word, and thought: Oh please God, I know I haven’t been a practising Catholic for many years but I am still a believer, help me.”
She also received plenty of help from her son, who sneaked McDonald’s and chocolate bars into his mother’s hospital room — an offence that would have sent Sister Scott incandescent with rage.
“(But) with the way hospital food can taste, it was a Godsend,” she said.
She is not yet in remission but has high hopes for 2018 and perhaps a 30th season on Home and Away with her recurring guest role as Ray “Alf” Meagher’s evil sister Morag.
“I would dearly love to go back to Summer Bay but haven’t heard anything as yet,” she said.