Terminally ill BBC newsreader Rachael Bland is desperately trying to complete her memoir so that her toddler son can read it when he’s older.
She hopes her son Freddie, just two-years-old will use the book – For Fred – as a way to get to know his mother as he grows up without her.
Rachael, a Radio 5 Live presenter was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer 2016, and it has since been confirmed to be incurable.
Rachael Bland with her husband Steve and two-year-old son Freddie at their home in Cheshire
She told The Times: ‘I’m writing it for him as an adult, to come back to through his life.
‘He’s not really at an age where he’s going to remember very much about me. I just wanted to get everything down in my words so he gets a sense of who I am, my sense of humour.’
She said she started For Fred last week but has already completed 12,000 words and is looking for a publisher so that readers touched by cancer might find some inspiration.
The brave journalist has also started recording series two of the podcast and hopes to return to Radio 5.
She said: ‘With the podcast, we’re trying to get the conversation going about cancer and try to make people less scared of it.
‘Even in this awful situation, facing a terminal diagnosis, good things can still come of it, and you can still live and enjoy life.’
She has also published a picture of herself when she got married.
The 40-year-old wrote: ‘Looking back on my best day as I struggle to have a shower and wash my hair without my oxygen tubing.
‘I may not look quite as polished on the outside – or be wearing such a fabulous dress. But inside I am just the same but a little bit stronger.’
BBC newsreader Rachael Bland shared this throwback photo of her wedding day with her Instagram followers to remember happier times when she was cancer-free
The BBC presenter undergoing chemotherapy, which she broadcast live on Facebook
The post has been liked hundreds of times and attracted scores of supportive comments.
‘An inspiration xx,’ wrote one of her Instagram followers. ‘Just stunning ❤❤❤❤,’ gushed another.
Rachael, who lives in Cheshire with her husband Steve and Freddie, has had several rounds of chemotherapy since her breast cancer diagnosis.
She also had a mastectomy in July 2017 and many sessions of radiotherapy, as well as trialling pioneering new drugs.
Rachael has been a BBC presenter for more than 15 years and previously spoke out about the devastating call she received telling her the cancer had spread.
‘I was at the ice cream farm with Freddie and some of his little pals. My heart raced as I answered it, knowing a phone call did not bode well,’ she wrote on her blog.
Rachael presenting on BBC News. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2016
‘Then came the words ‘I am so sorry, it’s bad news. The biopsies have come back showing the same cancer is back and is in the skin’.
‘I watched my little Freddie innocently playing away in a tyre in the barn and my heart broke for him.
‘I scooped him up and dashed home and then had to break Steve’s heart with the news that my cancer was now and therefore incurable.’
She added: ‘I feel a bit like a grenade with the pin out. We are waiting and hoping.’
Rachael has documented her battle on her emotional and inspiring blog, ‘Big C Little Me. Putting the Can into Cancer’, and her podcast, ‘You, Me & the Big C’.
Thousands of listeners tune in to BBC Radio Five Live to hear her weekly discussions with Lauren Mahon and Deborah James of the highs and lows of living with cancer.