Defiant Linda Nolan has begun her radiotherapy after her cancer spread to her brain - and bravely walked into the hospital as she vowed to tackle the disease "head on".
We can reveal, with the singer's permission, she has returned to the Rosemere Cancer Centre at Preston Royal Hospital this week for treatment.
Arm in arm with her sister Anne and also using a stick, she walked in to meet with doctors earlier this week. Unfortunately, the centre is a place well known to her, as It is where she had her previous radiotherapy treatments for cancer in 2017 and 2005.
A family source told the Mirror: "Linda was nervous about facing yet another round of radiotherapy. She’d been treated with it before and knows how physically and mentally demanding it can be.
"She’s never afraid to tackle things head on and this was no different. Even walking into the hospital with her walking stick, rather than being in her wheelchair, was an act of defiance against her cancer. She’s taking control and she means business."
After the sessions, she is returning home to live with her sister and best friend Denise. The pair already live very close together but she moved back in with Denise during her treatment for her hip and liver.
The source added: "She will be staying with Denise for the foreseeable, as she’s unsteady on her feet and because of the falls she has suffered recently."
In her book From My Heart, Linda detailed her first day of radiotherapy in 2017 and how important her family were to the process.
At the time she wrote: “Thank God I still had my family. And so the tears fell from my face onto the bed as the radiotherapy machine blasted its rays into me once again that morning.
"Somehow that first blast of radiotherapy and the familiarity of the hospital had made everything feel horribly real. Yep, this really was happening to me all over again.
"I was hoping and praying that when my two weeks of treatment were up I would never have to see any of them ever again. I really couldn't face doing radiotherapy for a third time, which I knew I might have to if this course didn't work.
"But the treatment was tough. The radiotherapy scorched my skin and left it red-raw. Clothes rubbed against it and walking was even more painful than ever.”
Appearing on ITV's Good Morning Britain earlier this week, Linda admitted she was "shocked and scared" after being told by her doctor that her cancer has spread to her brain.
On being pushed in a wheelchair to her previous hospital visit by sister Maureen, she added: “I can’t walk a long way at the moment so if I want to go out for some fresh air, I need a wheelchair.
“It’s [about] being practical and owning up that I have got this horrible disease. I don’t know how long I’ve got left and that’s not me being morbid - I don’t know, none of us know really."
Linda was first diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in 2005 before getting the all-clear in 2006.
But then in 2017, she received the devastating news her cancer returned as incurable secondary cancer in her hip and three years later it spread to her liver.
She and her sisters rose to fame with the family pop group The Nolans in the 70s, where she performed alongside sisters Anne, 71, Denise, 69, Maureen, 67, and Coleen, 57.
Her last sister Bernie was also a member but she died of breast cancer in 2013 aged 52.
