Dan Walker has revealed he was told he had cancer during a horrific hospital stay in Poland.
The 46-year-old TV presenter was rushed to hospital after his kidneys stopped working and he was pumped with eight liters of saline solution.
His head also doubled in size and he had to walk around naked because his body was so bloated that he couldn’t fit into his boxers.
Speaking on the White Wine Question Time podcast, Dan said he was forever grateful to his former colleague Richard Hughes, who accompanied him to the hospital.
He said: “I was in Poland a few years ago to cover the European Championships and I had a bit of a strange knot in my stomach.”
Horrifying: Dan Walker has revealed he was told he had cancer during a horrific hospital stay in Poland
Health: The 46-year-old TV presenter told how he was rushed to hospital after his kidneys stopped working and he was pumped with eight liters of saline
“My breathing changed a little and I went to the medical center at the broadcast center there, and within two and a half minutes I was in the back of an ambulance on the way to a Polish emergency room.”
“And a guy called Richard Hughes, who is now editor of Match Of The Day, and a guy I had worked with for many years, dropped everything and came with me.
“You know times in life when you think that sometimes you need someone to hold your hand.”
“That night it actually got a bit scary – around two in the morning a Polish consultant came and told me I had cancer because they had seen some shadows on my kidney. He used the word tumor.’
The couple had a fixer with them who spoke both Polish and English, and Dan asked them to confirm whether he had understood the doctor correctly.
She said, “He thinks you have cancer in your kidney.”
Dan tried to process the shocking news and debated whether he should call his wife and family and tell them.
He praised Richard for his calmness and said he had been “very wise, stupid and lovely” that evening.
Ordeal: His head also doubled in size and he had to walk around naked as his body was so bloated that he couldn’t fit into his boxer shorts (pictured in August 2023)
Horror: It turned out Dan didn’t have cancer but was instead battling a serious virus that was affecting the function of his kidneys (pictured November 2023)
Dan asked the head doctor if he could look at his scan to be 100% sure it was cancer before calling his family and telling them.
He said: “At eight o’clock in the morning she came straight in and said, ‘I’ve got good news, it’s not a tumour.’
It turned out Dan didn’t have cancer, but was battling a serious virus that was affecting the function of his kidneys.
He said: “There were a number of black shadows on my kidneys.” Because the functionality had dropped to about 30 percent, I had this strange kind of virus that had really affected them.
“It’s such a strange night because then they came in and pumped eight liters of saline into my body to try to get my kidney working again.”
“The next day they let me go home, they gave me medicine to fill my stomach and these really strong medicines to try to get the kidneys going again.”
“The next day I woke up and went to the bathroom mirror – my face, my head was about twice the size it is now.”
“Every part of my body was swollen and I couldn’t even put on my boxers.”
“I was walking around naked and couldn’t put my pants on because my body was so bloated from this water that wasn’t processed.”
“I was like the marshmallow man from Ghostbusters.”
Luckily, it didn’t take long for Dan to recover and his kidneys were functioning normally again within 48 hours.