The Block’s Darren Jolly says he couldn’t be more relieved after being given the all clear from doctors after they discovered a lump on his brain.
Darren tells Woman’s Day that upon hearing he was all clear he gave a “massive sigh of relief”.
“To know that it’s all nothing sinister, nothing dangerous in your head, it was a great relief,” the 33-year-old former AFL star said.
The cyst was initially discovered after he innocently sought help for a headache that just didn’t seem to go away. Doctors at a Melbourne hospital found a lump and immediately admitted him to hospital before performing a ventriculostomy, which involves drilling through a patient’s skull to drain fluid.
Following the surgery Dee and Darren were faced with what felt like a long wait to determine whether the lump was cancerous, but thankfully, Darren has now been given the all clear.
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“We just hugged,” the pair said on hearing the good news.
Although the pair now know the cyst is benign, Dee says the past week has been extremely hard. But – never one to go out without a fight – she put on a brave face for her husband and their daughters.
“I definitely put on a brave face around Daz because I think that for him, it was scary for all of us but for him it was more scary, so I just wanted to be there for him and be really supportive and try and be positive until we knew what we were dealing with,” she said.
“So I sort of spent the days putting on a brave face and then would go home and be upset at night time.”
Dee’s brave face certainly helped her husband who says that although he knew the situation was serious, he didn’t prepare himself for the worst and really relied on her support.
“She was amazing. Would come every day and just kept me company. I really feel for people who have to be in hospital for long periods of time because I was slightly going mad,” he said.
“There’s only a certain amount of TV you can watch in a little tiny room. Dee was great, she was a good distraction. She was really strong at hospital.”
Daz is now recovering at home from the surgery and will need to monitor the lump through ongoing scans, with doctors saying there’s a 50 percent chance the cyst will grow again.
“The doctors said it was common that this cyst or lump is normal in most people,” Darren explains.
“In some sort of form there is a lump there in someone’s brain but he said for whatever reason it’s flared up in yours, it’s nothing related with The Block, it’s not related to footy, it’s just an occurrence that’s finally just decided to rear up and get angry and cause the headaches.”
The pair are now looking forward to getting on with their life together, but they say the experience has made them appreciate what they have even more.
“This has made me really appreciate everything I have in my life,” Daz says.
“I’ve got Dee, I’ve got great kids, I’ve been very lucky to have these experiences and I suppose looking back on these last ten years that I’ve had some pretty amazing things that I’ve been involved in.
“It’s sort of put it all in perspective and really just made me think that the superficial things that we all worry about as people don’t really matter anymore.”
