Jonnie Irwin shares important message after totally unexpected experience

Jonnie Irwin has opened up about his experience of receiving care in a hospice, revealing the big misconceptions that he had before he found out what it was really like.

Last year, the A Place In The Sun presenter revealed that he was informed that he could have ‘months’ to live after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The 49-year-old was initially diagnosed with lung cancer in August 2020, before it spread to his brain.

On Monday July 24, Jonnie appeared on BBC One’s Morning Live to discuss what it has been like for him to receive palliative care and to be taken care of in a hospice, emphasising how his views have changed in recent years.

Telling presenters Helen Skelton and Gethin Jones that he was having an ‘up day’ and that his family was doing ‘great’, the TV personality outlined that he has been using palliative care for three years.

‘Palliative care is the care you’re given when the doctors think you won’t recover. I’ve been in palliative care from day one,’ he shared, outlining that palliative care can take ‘many guises’, including support in a hospice.

‘My hospice is a delight actually. I wouldn’t say it’s like a hotel, but it’s like a very nice private hospital,’ he stated.

‘My perception of a hospice was very much a boiling hot room full of people that look frail and towards the end of their days. This is nothing of the sort. It’s spacious, energised, comfortable. It’s even got a jacuzzi bath, en suite rooms.

‘The staff are just amazing. I’ve had a really good experience of my hospice.’

Jonnie, who shares three children with his wife Jessica Holmes, was asked what advice he would give to people who may be in a similar situation to him.

‘First of all, embrace it,’ he said, explaining that his first experience of palliative care came when he was invited to do a blood transfusion in a hospice as a day patient, where he was placed in a ‘lovely room’ with a table full of biscuits.

‘I implore people to check out the hospice – if you’ve got the choice of using it, then use it,’ he stated.

‘You have a right to a choice of a hospice if you so wish, I would encourage people to at least explore that option, because it’s not this doom and gloom operation that you might think it was.’

Doctor and former Strictly Come Dancing contestant Dr Ranj Singh was also on Morning Live, stressing that he believes ‘we need to reframe how people think’ of palliative care.

‘It’s not a withdrawal of care, it’s a redirection of care,’ he explained, highlighting that palliative care is about changing the focus from curing a condition to making sure that people are as comfortable as possible, providing them with the ‘best quality of life for however long you have left’.

‘It’s not a one-way street, as some people may imagine,’ he added.

While palliative care is ‘funded mostly by the NHS’, Dr Ranj said, some are funded by charities, and some people may opt for private care if they can pay for it themselves.

Jonnie shared that his hospice is predominantly funded privately, with a third of his hospice funded by statutory bodies like the NHS and local councils.

The rest, which reaches millions, comes down to sources such as fundraising efforts, as he added that if it’s solely reliant on the NHS, then it’s ‘probably a basic service they provide’.

Morning Live airs weekdays at 9.15am on BBC One.

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