Sir Chris Hoy gives terminal cancer treatment update as 'we don't know what's coming'

Sir Chris Hoy and his wife Lady Sarra Hoy have discussed his terminal cancer diagnosis and given a treatment update in their first interview together. Today on ITV's This Morning, they joined presenters Cat Deeley and Dermot O'Leary on the sofa to share their story of the past year, which has seen their family go through their toughest time yet.

Determined to spread a message of hope and happiness, Sir Chris has released a new book ‘All That Matters’. The six-time Olympic gold medallist, who recently revealed that he had terminal cancer and has been given between just two and four years to live, explained how he found out about his diagnosis: “I had this pain in my shoulder and it wouldn’t go away. I was 47 then, still lifting weights in the gym, still physically active. You’re used to having aches and pains [at that age] but this one didn’t go away…

“I went to get the scan at the doctor's surgery and they brought the scan up and said ‘there’s a tumour on your shoulder, we need to find out what the root of this is’ so I had multiple other scans and eventually the root of it was a prostate, and it was stage 4 prostate cancer, which had spread to the bones. [I had] no symptoms, nothing to point to this diagnosis until the shoulder pain, so it came out of the blue. I always prided myself as someone who would go to the doctor with illness or pain. As part of being an athlete, you’re used to looking after your body and being quite aware of yourself, but in this case, it was too late by the time we had actually found the diagnosis.”

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He continued: “We were in the room, and we got the diagnosis and I felt sick, I felt nauseous and the room felt like it was spinning. I had to get up but I couldn’t sit still and it’s not the news that you can ever prepare yourself for. You can never imagine yourself in that situation and a million thoughts are running through your head. The first one was ‘how on earth are we going to tell the kids?’”

Shortly after Sir Chris’s diagnosis, his wife Lady Sarra was also diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Explaining how she initially kept her diagnosis from her husband, she said: “It came completely out of the blue and I just knew it wasn’t the right time. I always tell Chris everything and we are always each other’s crutch in everything in life so it was very against the grain to not share it with him but I just knew it wasn’t the right time. We were trying to find stable ground having just been given this diagnosis from him.”

She continued: “It’s been tough, but actually, we’ve been able to do it together. Once you’re in it, you can cope with so much more than you think.”

Sir Chris added: “Even sitting here doing this [the interview], six months ago there is no way we could have done it - it would have been too emotional. It’s having targets each day, it’s having things that you have to focus on. The kids are the centre of your life so that’s your purpose to get out of bed and to get on and look after them to make sure they’re okay. But it’s about bringing it back to the here and the now, the future doesn’t exist yet… so it’s about trying to be present, trying to appreciate the ‘now’.”

Sharing an update on his treatment, Sir Chris said: “Now, I am pain-free. Everything is under control for the moment and there is a plan for the next stage of treatment. When the current stages stop working, we go onto the next stage.

"So you have a plan and you adapt to the situation, you accept it and you appreciate the here and the now because none of us know what’s coming… Not everybody is as lucky as myself, some people don’t have as much time but for now, I am fit and healthy and I am going to crack on and hopefully raise a huge amount of money and change perceptions of stage 4 cancer. There’s a lot of life left to live.”

To see the show in full visit itv.com/watch/this-morning. This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV, ITVX, STV and STV Player.