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Channel 10 star Barry Du Bois reveals harrowing moment he was given ‘three months to live’

Beloved Channel 10 star Barry Du Bois has penned an emotional letter detailing his cancer journey.

Barry Du Bois talks about his cancer battle on The Living Room

Channel 10 presenter Barry Du Bois has penned an emotional essay about his ongoing cancer battle, revealing a doctor once told him he had “three months to live”.

The father of two was first diagnosed in 2010 with solitary plasmacytoma, a rare form of blood cancer.

“I was sitting in a cold, unfamiliar consult room at the hospital, my wife’s hand holding mine … then a doctor who had known me for only a few hours looked me in the eye and told me I had three months to live,” he recalled in letter for The Gold Coast Bulletin.

Fortunately, that doctor’s prognosis did not prove to be correct, although Du Bois continues to live with Multiple Myeloma, an incurable form of blood cancer that affects the immune system and attacks bone marrow, after the cancer returned in 2017.

Barry Du Bois with wife Leonie. Picture: Instagram
Barry Du Bois with wife Leonie. Picture: Instagram

In the moving essay, Du Bois credited his past medical setbacks for giving him the strength and resolve to get through that three-month prognosis.

He had previously broken his back after falling 14 metres from a roof, and later went through years of failed IVF treatment with his wife, Leonie, which culminated in her being diagnosed with cervical cancer just two weeks after a miscarriage on their 12th round of IVF.

“When I got my diagnosis – incurable cancer, three months to live – I didn’t fall apart … I knew that from leaning into the previous adversities of life I had the resilience to give the fight of my life,” Du Bois said.

Du Bois has been open about his heartbreaking cancer journey. Picture: Instagram
Du Bois has been open about his heartbreaking cancer journey. Picture: Instagram

But that hadn’t always been the case. After his wife’s miscarriage and cancer diagnosis, Du Bois initially struggled to find a way to go on.

“I avoided conversation and started a continual negative conversation with myself that took me into the darkness … depression is a lonely state and I refused to share my pain. I saw it as a weakness.”

But in the end his family helped to pull him through, and he’s since used the positive outlook to give him the strength to keep going.

Du Bois first appeared on Aussie screens in 2011 as a contestant on The Renovators, before joining Amanda Keller, Dr Chris Brown and Miguel Maestre as a co-host on The Living Room.

He’s been very vocal about his cancer journey over the last decade, regularly sharing inspiring updates and honest confessions on his social media platforms with fans as he continues to beat his initial devastating prognosis handed to him.

“I was overwhelmed with fear, uncertainty, and the unknown,” he said earlier this year of his diagnosis.

“But through it all, I realised something that I feel is why I am here today: It wasn’t going to be cancer that defined me but the way I choose to approach it.”

Originally published as Channel 10 star Barry Du Bois reveals harrowing moment he was given ‘three months to live’

Original URL: https://www.themercury.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/channel-10-star-barry-du-bois-reveals-harrowing-moment-he-was-given-three-months-to-live/news-story/20a2e0a910358c1861d2c4d23c8cd617