Jonnie Irwin has gotten great appreciation for his newest message, in which he urges people to seek hospice care and explains what palliative care comprises.
On Monday’s Morning Live, the TV host joined Helen Skelton and Gethin Jones via video chat to talk about his experiences.
Jonnie, 49, stated that he has been utilising palliative care for three years after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer that spread to his brain, with Dr Ranj Singh also there to speak about palliative care from a medical expert’s perspective.
‘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 stated, outlining that palliative care ‘can take many guises’, including 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,’ the father-of-three said.
‘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.’
When asked what advice he would provide to others in a similar scenario to his own, Jonnie advised them to “embrace it,” before describing his first experience as a day patient at a hospice for a blood transfusion.
‘I implore people to check out the hospice – if you’ve got the choice of using it, then use it,’ he said.
Jonnie was praised on Twitter for speaking out about hospices and correcting common misunderstandings among the general population.
One palliative care nurse tweeted: ‘Thank you for highlighting the work we do in #Hospices and that not just for those in last few days of life … majority of patients don’t want to access our care due to this myth, and yes we are mostly charity funded.’
A palliative medicine doctor also wrote: ‘So brilliant to see you talking about palliative care this morning. What a brilliant advocate Jonnie is. Wonderful to hear his positive experience.’
Another individual whose husband received palliative care shared: ‘Watching your piece on palliative care this morning, my husband was diagnosed in April last year we were given a palliative care nurse immediately and without her and the Hospice (where he died in December) we would never have coped.’
While Dr Ranj outlined that palliative care is ‘funded mostly by the NHS’, with some funded by charities and some people opting for private care, Jonnie explained that his hospice is ‘majority funded privately’.
‘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,’ he added.
The A Place In The Sun star stressed that the majority of the money used to fund his hospice comes from efforts such as charity shops and raising money through activities such as skydives, describing it as a ‘rich tapestry of fundraising’.
Morning Live airs weekdays at 9.15am on BBC One.
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