Annabel Croft says nurse’s ‘cruel’ treatment of dying husband left her ‘traumatised’

Annabel Croft has said a nurse’s “cruel” treatment of her dying husband left her “traumatised”.

The former tennis player and TV presenter has reflected on the death of Mel Coleman, who died of stomach cancer aged 60 in May 2023 – just 16 weeks after he was diagnosed.

Croft, who credited her participation on last year’s Strictly Come Dancing with helping her through her grief, shared details about Coleman’s experience in the weeks leading to his death in a new interview.

She said that Coleman’s diagnosis arrived after he felt “funny pains”, which they believed might have been indigestion. However, after undergoing tests, Coleman was told he had incurable cancer in the stomach, which had spread to his liver and kidneys.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, Croft recalled a bad experience with a particularly harsh nurse at Kingston Hospital in Coleman’s final hours.

Croft said the nurse loudly announced that Coleman was dying – so much so that he could hear.

“She was so cruel,” the broadcaster stated. ”I think she was a psychopath, the glee and enjoyment she took in Mel’s demise. Every time I asked her to keep her voice down, she said, ‘No, he needs to hear.’”

When one of Croft’s children asked the nurse if their father had weeks or months to live, she replied: “Hours!” telling the family: “Oh, and if he has a heart attack, we won’t revive him.”

Croft continued: “Mel heard and said, ‘I don’t like the sound of a DNR.’ She said to me, ‘Listen, he has cancer, he’s going to die. We’re not resuscitating him.’ It was evil beyond anything you could imagine. To this day I am traumatised by it.”

Kingston Hospital told The Independent in response to Croft’s experience: “We deeply regret that the care experienced by Annabel Croft and her family in the final hours of her husband’s life did not meet the high standards of kindness, compassion and understanding that we strive for.

“We are extremely sorry for the distress this has caused, and we are committed to learning from this and ensuring that others do not have the same experience.

We cannot go into the detail of this situation, however we have reached out as we would very much like to meet with Annabel Croft to understand more about her experience with Kingston Hospital, and to give us the opportunity to investigate this further.”

Elsewhere, Croft revealed that a strict diet change might have “significantly reduced” her husband’s cancer.

Coleman turned down chemotherapy and an operation to remove the tumours as he knew he would die regardless – but Croft said that Coleman started eating a strict ketogenic diet after speaking to a microbiologist friend, who said that it might reverse the cancer spreading.

Coleman’s diet consisted of sugar-free, low-carb food items, as well as plenty of meat, and, according to Croft “his pain and nausea disappeared” as a result.

After Coleman’s death, scans revealed that the tumours in his liver had “significantly diminished”. Croft said: “He never said he was frightened. He was really positive and thought he was going to beat it.”

The link between cancer and nutrition has become much researched and debated in recent years. Data from the World Cancer Research Fund found that, of the 387,000 people diagnosed with cancer in the UK between 2019 and 2020, 40 per cent of those cases could have been prevented with lifestyle changes.

Speaking to The Independent in April, Timothy Rebbeck, a professor at Harvard University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said that, while there are some cancers for which diet and nutrition play a very limited role, colon cancer is “very strongly influenced” by what we eat.