logo
BREAKING NEWS Beloved ABC star tragically dies after battle with cancer

BREAKING NEWS Beloved ABC star tragically dies after battle with cancer

Daily Mail​5 days ago
Veteran reporter Peter Ryan has died aged 64 after a battle with thyroid cancer.
The Walkley Award-winning journalist, who worked as a reporter for 45 years with the ABC, was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer in 2014.
His family confirmed he passed away in Sydney on Friday night.
Peter began his career as a cadet at the Sydney Daily Mirror before landing a job at the ABC.
He worked as the head of TV news and current affairs in Victoria, before becoming the ABC's Washington bureau chief and the founding editor of Lateline Business, which later became The Business.
From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop.
In 2017, Ryan won the Walkley Award for his coverage of the Commonwealth Bank scandal which exposed deposit machines being used by drug syndicates to launder millions of dollars.
He was awarded the Order of Australia Medal in 2022 for his service to journalism.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Aussie TV favourite opens up about heartbreaking menopause battle - and reveals why it almost 'broke' her
Aussie TV favourite opens up about heartbreaking menopause battle - and reveals why it almost 'broke' her

Daily Mail​

time2 hours ago

  • Daily Mail​

Aussie TV favourite opens up about heartbreaking menopause battle - and reveals why it almost 'broke' her

Shelly Horton has opened up about her experience with menopause as she prepares to release a tell-all book about her ordeal. The Today Extra presenter, 51, has long been open about her struggle with perimenopause and admitted to Stellar this week that the condition 'broke' her. 'I'm living proof that you can go through dark times and come out. It broke me... but I rebuilt,' she said. Perimenopause typically affects women between 40 - 50 years old, and is the transitional phase before menopause where their hormone levels start to fluctuate, causing symptoms like irregular periods and mood changes. Shelly added she hadn't even heard of perimenopause until she found herself in hospital in 2020 to undergo an ablation – a procedure to stop persistent bleeding. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Doctors at the time told her that she might have cancer, sending her for an ultrasound. When the test proved negative, doctors told her that she must be 'stressed' and to 'take up a hobby'. 'I drove home in tears, blaming myself, and didn't go and see another doctor for nine months,' she admitted. Shelly added that it was a consultation with friend and TV medico Dr Ginny Mansberg that helped her understand her experience and dispel her preconceived notions about menopause. 'I had that stereotype in my brain of grey-haired old ladies clutching their pearls and fanning themselves,' she said. 'I didn't understand that perimenopause can last 10 years... so, in fact, I was right in the average age group.' Shelly has since become an ardent spokesperson on the matter, sharing her experiences at the first parliamentary round table on menopause. It was a historic moment, as it was the first time menopause had been mentioned in the Australian Parliament. She is also set to release a book this week, I'm Your Peri Godmother, detailing her experiences, as part of a continued effort to de-stigmatise the issue that millions of women deal with. It comes after Shelly shared the shock and heartbreak she felt when her doctor told her she would need to have a hysterectomy due to severe bleeding and perimenopause symptoms. 'I'm shocked at how overwhelmed and teary I feel about it' she wrote in her column for Nine Honey in 2024. Shelly, who has been married to husband Darren Robinson for over a decade, added that while she has never wanted children, she has still felt some 'grief' over losing the reproductive organ. 'I'm proudly childfree by choice, so I am furious this organ that I haven't ever needed gives me so much misery,' she wrote. 'I've joked to friends I want to sell my uterus on eBay – "One uterus. Never used. Still in box!" 'Yet, just as I laugh, I also feel a mix of anger, sadness and a sense of betrayal by my own body.' Shelly stressed that 'a uterus does not define a woman' and added her story is a 'call to action for all of us to redefine womanhood beyond biological functions.' She has been open in the past about why she doesn't want to have children with her husband, and they are perfectly content to be raising a family that includes two dogs instead. But Shelly admitted she was rattled by an email from a troll which labelled Horton as an 'obese feminist' he would like to see 'get off TV'. The full email read: 'I'm so happy you don't have kids, now just to get you off TV would be the best Christmas gift any man could ask for. Obese feminist is nothing to be proud of.' 'Trolls don't normally worry me. I get messages like that a lot as do most women in the media,' she said the following day. 'But I've been working very long hours on some big new projects, so I was tired, he got under my skin. Thank you all for being my cheer squad... felt like a warm hug. Suck on that,' she added, referring to the email's author.

‘Ignoring hot flushes is wrong': study challenges assumptions about perimenopause symptoms
‘Ignoring hot flushes is wrong': study challenges assumptions about perimenopause symptoms

The Guardian

time3 hours ago

  • The Guardian

‘Ignoring hot flushes is wrong': study challenges assumptions about perimenopause symptoms

Almost 40% of women going through perimenopause experience moderate to severe hot flushes and night sweats but have no treatment options, new research has found. The study, published in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, explored differences in symptom prevalence by menopausal stage among women aged 40-69 years. More than 8,000 participants who self-identified as a woman completed the Australian women's midlife years (AMY) study. After excluding women on medication or those who had undergone a procedure that would affect their hormones or symptoms, Monash University researchers analysed the remaining 5,509: 1250 were classified as pre-menopausal, 344 early perimenopausal, 271 late perimenopausal, and 3,644 postmenopausal. Senior author, Prof Susan Davis, said while vasomotor symptoms (VMS) – such as hot flushes and night sweats – were already known to be typical of menopause, the study found moderate to severe VMS symptoms to be the most defining symptom of perimenopause, the time period leading up to the final menstrual period. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Although other symptoms were commonly reported by perimenopausal women, including poor memory and low mood, analysis showed none differed in prevalence enough from pre-menopause to differentiate between menopausal stages. The study found 37.3% of women in late perimenopause had moderately-to-severely bothersome hot flushes: meaning they were five times more prevalent among perimenopausal women compared with pre-menopause. Severe vaginal dryness was 2.5 times more prevalent among perimenopausal women compared with pre-menopause. Menopausal hormonal therapy (MHT, also known as HRT) is effective for treating VMS due to menopause, but there are no specifically designed or approved interventions for these symptoms for perimenopausal women, the researchers noted. Treating perimenopause is not the same as treating post-menopause because women are still randomly ovulating, contraception needs to be considered, MHT can make bleeding heavier and progesterone worsens PMS, Davis said. The study also challenged the assumption that menstrual irregularity is the earliest sign of perimenopause. Davis said it is common for women to ask their GPs if their heavier periods and hot flushes are a sign of perimenopause, only for the doctor to respond: 'If you're still getting regular cycles, you can't possibly be perimenopausal.' But when the study compared pre-menopausal women with VMS whose periods were still regular but had changes – becoming lighter or heavier – they were the same as women who had VMS but who'd started experiencing changes in period cycle frequency. 'So we're really saying ignoring hot flushes and night sweats is wrong,' she said. Dr Rakib Islam, also a study author, said defining perimenopause and menopause by menstrual cycle overlooks women with regular cycles and those who no longer menstruate, such as those who have had an endometrial ablation or hysterectomy, and users of hormonal contraception. 'Our findings support a more symptom-based approach, enabling earlier recognition of perimenopause and more timely care,' Islam said. Davis said it was 'critical' that women were recruited to the study with no mention made of menopause, so the sample was not biased. Prof Martha Hickey, the chair of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Melbourne and lead author of last year's Lancet series on menopause called it an important study. The study reached quite a large number of women and provided deeper insight into perimenopause, an area traditionally overlooked in menopause research,' she said. 'More than a third of research in medical treatments is done by pharmaceutical companies. They traditionally have excluded perimenopausal women from the research because the perimenopausal women are still producing their own hormones in a sometimes unpredictable way, and it didn't fit with the study design that they wanted,' Hickey said. Hickey said the study's main limitation was that it was a cross-sectional survey. So while it was helpful for knowing what symptoms women categorised to a particular stage might experience, 'it doesn't tell us how these things change as women go through menopause'.

Weird swelling revealed first sign man's fingers and toes were ‘completely replaced' by cancer
Weird swelling revealed first sign man's fingers and toes were ‘completely replaced' by cancer

The Sun

timea day ago

  • The Sun

Weird swelling revealed first sign man's fingers and toes were ‘completely replaced' by cancer

A MAN developed painful swelling in one of his fingers and toes over the course of six weeks. It turned out to be a rare sign of cancer that had spread through his body - and the bones in his digits had been " completely replaced" by cancerous tumours. 2 Prior to swelling, the 55-year-old from Australia had been diagnosed with metastatic squamous-cell lung cancer. Squamous cell lung cancer is known for spreading to multiple sites, including the brain, spine and other bones, adrenal glands, and liver. It's a type of non-small cell cancer, the most common type of lung cancer, and accounts for roughly 80-85 per cent of all lung cancer cases. His case was published this month in The New England Journal of Medicine. Six weeks after noticing swelling in his right middle finger and his right big toe, the man went to his local hospital. Doctors found the tip of each was red and swollen, and an ulcer had formed near the nail of the affected toe. The swollen areas were firm to touch and tender, the doctors reported. Scans revealed his hand and foot contained "destructive lytic lesions that had completely replaced" the bones in the finger and toe. Lytic lesions are areas of bone destruction that appear as holes or weakened spots on imaging scans. While cancer that's spread to the fingers and toes may mimic gout on a physical examination, a scan called a radiograph can help identify lytic lesions, the patient's doctors noted. The man was diagnosed with acrometastasis - the rare occurrence of cancerous tumours metastasising to the bones of the hands or feet. Acrometastases account for about 0.1 per cent of all metastatic cancers, according to a 2021 review. In most cases, the condition is seen in patients who already have cancer. But in some instances, acrometastasis can be the first sign for undiagnosed cancers. It's most often linked to cancers of the lung, gastrointestinal tract and genitourinary tract. Acrometastases are seen more often in males than in females, according to the review. 2 And it tends to be rare, because in most cases, cancer cells are drawn to bone marrow, which is found in the long bones of the arms, legs, ribs, backbone, breastbone and pelvis. Finger and toe bones contain less bone marrow. Additionally, the further a bone is from the heart, the less blood it gets. Lower blood flow makes it harder for cancer cells to reach the fingertips or toes, so acrometastases happen less often there. Because acrometastases are usually seen in late-stage cancers, they're linked to poor survival rate. Treatments are typically focused on relieving a patient's pain and retaining as much function in the hand or foot as possible. In the 55-year-old's case, he was started on palliative radiotherapy, which aims to relieve symptoms rather than cure the disease. The doctors reports he died three weeks later from complications of refractory hypercalcemia - persistently high calcium levels in the blood that don't respond to standard treatments. Common symptoms of acrometastasis Acrometastasis, the spread of cancer to the bones of the hands or feet, can present with symptoms like pain, swelling, redness, and warmth in the affected area. These symptoms can mimic benign conditions like arthritis or infection, leading to potential diagnostic delays. Common symptoms include: Pain: Often deep-seated, intermittent, and may not be relieved by typical painkillers. Swelling: Can be localized to a specific digit or involve a larger area. Redness and warmth: May indicate an inflammatory process, but can also be a sign of acrometastasis. Tenderness: The affected area may be tender to the touch. Functional impairment: Difficulty using the hand or foot due to pain or swelling. Ulceration or bleeding: In some cases, the skin over the affected area may ulcerate or bleed. Palpable mass: A lump or mass may be felt in the affected digit.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store