Nick Clegg has revealed how the decision to take his teenage son to the doctor for a “tiny bump” led to the shock diagnosis of blood cancer.
The former deputy prime minister said it was after a family holiday in northern Spain in September 2016 that his son Antonio began complaining about a lump on the top of his chest.
In an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine, Mr Clegg described the 15-year-old, who he shares with his wife Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, as an “incredibly active, physically strong boy”.
“To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to take him to the GP,” he said. “It was those early days in September, you know, when you have to get kids ready for school.
“Miriam had to work very heavily that week, so I was at home most of the time, helping to do the preparatory things, buying clothes for the new term – and Antonio said he had this thing.
“We had an afternoon, so I thought, ‘Why don’t I just take him, and he’ll stop going on about it’.”
Mr Clegg said it was unusual for his son to complain, and that his decision to seek help was out of character – as normally he is “quite brutal” owing to the mentality of his Dutch mother who thought going to the doctors should be avoided.
The former Liberal Democrat leader said the GP was “brilliant” as “lymphoma is quite a difficult thing to diagnose”.
“You could barely see it with the naked eye. But he took pretty much one look at him and said, ‘That’s not right’,” he told the publication.
Describing the cancer as like a “huge bunch of black grapes” when viewing the x-ray, he said from then on it felt as though they they were “sailing through a storm”.
Mr Clegg said: “Antonio was extraordinarily brave and resilient. I’m not sure he fully appreciated the enormity of it at the time.”
He said his son is now back at school, and in September told how Antonio received treatment at University College Hospital in London – undergoing chemotherapy and taking heavy steroids.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here