Dan Walker reveals horror cancer scare which left his head doubled in size

Dan Walker has revealed a horrific incident being rushed to hospital in Poland (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)

TV presenter Dan Walker has revealed a horrific incident where he was told he had cancer after being rushed to hospital in Poland.

The former BBC Breakfast presenter, who moved to Channel 5 last year, revealed his head doubled in size after his kidneys stopped working in 2012.

Dan began: ‘I was in Poland a few years ago covering the European Championships and I had a slightly strange lump in my stomach.

‘I felt my breathing was changing a little bit and I went to the medical centre in the broadcast centre there, and within two and a half minutes I was in the back of an ambulance on my way to a Polish A&E.’

Speaking on the White Wine Question Time podcast, Dan went on to praise Match of the Day editor Richard Hughes who ‘dropped everything’ and supported him.

The 46-year-old went on: ‘You know times in life when you think sometimes you just need someone to hold your hand.

‘It did get a bit scary that night – about two o’clock in the morning a Polish consultant came in and told me that I had cancer because they’d seen some shadows on my kidney, and he used the word tumour.’

Dan was given some horrific news about a tumour, before it was later confirmed to be a virus (Picture: PA)

Dan had asked the translator with them to confirm he had heard the doctor correctly, and was shocked to hear: ‘He thinks you’ve got cancer in your kidney.’

Thankfully, it was later confirmed that it wasn’t a tumour, and Dan was battling a virus that had harmed his kidneys, which the head consultant told him the following morning.

While Dan had chose not to tell his family until it was 100% confirmed, he admitted that having to process what he thought would be bad news overnight was a shock.

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‘I didn’t go to a dark place or anything,’ he added, saying: ‘In the same way, when I had my bike accident in February this year, and I was out for the count for 20 minutes, I had a weird out-of-body experience that day and I was watching myself on the floor looking at the paramedics.

‘I felt – and this is going to sound really strange and I have no way of explaining it to you – but I almost felt like I was sucked back into my body and looking out of my eyes again and the circle got bigger and bigger, and I could see them and not hear them before the sound came back into my brain,’ he went on.

Dan was swollen after having eight litres of saline pumped through him (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)

Returning to the horrific cancer scare, Dan continued: ‘I didn’t cry or panic in Poland, I just carefully thought it through, I thought about what – if it was the case that I had cancer – what would I tell my wife, I didn’t know how serious it might be at that point.

‘I just knew there were a series of black shadows on my kidneys. Because they went down to about 30 per cent functionality, so I had this weird sort of virus that had really affected them.

‘It’s such a strange night because they then came in and they pumped eight litres of saline fluid into my body to try and get my kidney to start again.

‘The next day they let me go home, they gave me drugs to line my stomach and these really heavy drugs to try and get the kidneys started again.

‘The next day I woke up and I went to the bathroom mirror, part of me wishes I had taken a photograph but I didn’t because my face, my head was about twice the size that it is at the moment.

‘Every part of my body was swollen and I couldn’t even get my boxer shorts on.

Dan recalled how he felt after his accident in February (Picture: Instagram)

‘I was walking around naked, I couldn’t get my pants on because my body was so bloated with this water that wasn’t being processed.

‘I was like the shape of Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, I had to wait for the kidneys to start working again.’

Earlier this year, Dan revealed he was still suffering from nerve damage caused by the near-fatal bike crash in February, which left him bruised and battered.

The Strictly Come Dancing star – who shared pictures immediately after his fall from inside an ambulance – also spoke about potentially needing to have his tooth removed and being unable to feel a part of his lip.

At the time he shared a series of images of his bloodied and bruised face on social media after he was rushed from the scene in an ambulance.

He later told Helen Skelton of the crash: ‘I was in Sheffield town centre, I can remember getting to the roundabout, I looked to my righthand side, I saw there was a gap and I went into the gap.

‘All I know is I got hit by a car and obviously I smashed my face up a bit, I landed really heavily on my hip.’

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Dan was rushed to A&E.