The heartbreaking account of an 11-year-old girl who bravely shared her experience on camera as she faced cancer for the fourth and final time, left TV stars in floods of tears last night after her emotional Stand Up To Cancer film was broadcast nationally during C4’s Celebrity Gogglebox, just months after she passed away.
Elizabeth Rooney from Gosport in Hampshire was first diagnosed with a rare form of cancer at the age of three when a neuroendocrine tumour was discovered in the tissue surrounding her eye. Despite having her eye removed in 2020 to prevent it coming back, Elizabeth’s cancer returned just weeks after losing her mum, Charlotte Lewis, to breast cancer last October.
Shortly afterwards, Elizabeth chose to tell her story in an emotive Stand Up To Cancer film to raise awareness and help others – something she felt passionately about throughout her short life. It was broadcast for the first time on Channel 4 on Wednesday ahead of the night of live television on Friday.
Celebrity Gogglebox featured stars including actor Stephen Graham, father and son Jeff and Bobby Brazier, former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger and her rugyby player fiance Thom Evans, Bob Mortimer and actor Richard Ayoade and Jennifer Saunders.
Elizabeth's story reduced Stephen Graham to tears and had a visible effect on Jennifer Saunders and her daughter Beattie Edmondson.
Elizabeth Rooney from Gosport in Hampshire was first diagnosed with a rare form of cancer at the age of three when a neuroendocrine tumour was discovered in the tissue surrounding her eye. Despite having her eye removed in 2020 to prevent it coming back, Elizabeth’s cancer returned just weeks after losing her mum, Charlotte Lewis, to breast cancer last October.
Shortly afterwards, Elizabeth chose to tell her story in an emotive Stand Up To Cancer film to raise awareness and help others – something she felt passionately about throughout her short life. It was broadcast for the first time on Channel 4 on Wednesday ahead of the night of live television on Friday.
Celebrity Gogglebox featured stars including actor Stephen Graham, father and son Jeff and Bobby Brazier, former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger and her rugyby player fiance Thom Evans, Bob Mortimer and actor Richard Ayoade and Jennifer Saunders.
Elizabeth's story reduced Stephen Graham to tears and had a visible effect on Jennifer Saunders and her daughter Beattie Edmondson.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 My name is Elizabeth Rooney and I've had cancer roughly four times.
00:11 So Elizabeth had cancer first of all when she was three, reoccurred around about six,
00:16 again then somewhere around about seven or eight.
00:19 There's so many adults that would have struggled massively with what she's been through,
00:23 but there's some sort of spirit inside her that's undefeatable.
00:27 I like going to school because I get to see my friends every day.
00:31 But I was noticing it was a bit harder to get round the school at break times and lunch times.
00:38 So I stayed with the boys and her grandmother took her to hospital.
00:41 And so we stayed overnight and then finally they were like, yes, there is something wrong.
00:48 It was in nearly all of her hips, her lungs, her lymph nodes.
00:56 And there was some concerning aspects up on her skull and towards her brain.
01:02 One more would be it and she'd lose her eye so she knew it was on the card.
01:06 They're like, right, we're going to have to do something about this.
01:08 It's growing back too many times.
01:11 And so they were like, OK, we're going to have to remove the eye.
01:17 She cried a bit and then she looked at me and I kind of knew what she was thinking.
01:21 I said, you're allowed to swear if you want.
01:24 So she said, F you cancer and wiped her eyes and went, right, what's next?
01:30 I had heard people dying from it.
01:35 I had never actually encountered it with someone I knew.
01:39 They knew mummy was ill, they knew she was very ill.
01:49 But eventually then we found out that it was in her bones, it was metastatic.
01:53 And that meant it was incurable and terminal.
01:56 And she said if they can hold it back for long enough, then they might find a cure for it.
02:01 And I was quite happy after that then.
02:05 They had found out it was in too many places.
02:08 So they did chemotherapy, helped her a bit, but it wasn't enough.
02:15 And then a couple of days afterwards, she died.
02:22 And the moment when she was going, we'd had a memory come up that morning on Facebook.
02:29 So I made sure that was playing at the very last moment so that she could,
02:33 the last thing she heard was her kids laughing, so that she knew how good she was.
02:40 She'd always had her mum with her for everything she went through,
02:51 all the treatments she'd had, her mum was always by her side.
02:54 So it was a very difficult time for Elizabeth,
02:57 because she had to cope with not having a mum,
03:00 but not having a mum to support her during that difficult time.
03:04 Well, today I'm here to get rid of the other bits of cancer I have now.
03:10 And I'm scared of it because it's in lots more places, my mum's side from it.
03:18 But if you want to start living a happy life,
03:25 you've just got to trek on the path it's decided to give you.
03:31 Even if she's at her most tired after chemotherapy,
03:37 she won't say no to her little brother who wants to do a draw-in.
03:41 When you go for a scan, it's like the scan's eating you.
03:45 You just go in and you come back out of the mouth.
03:50 They're going to check scans and it is shrinking,
03:53 just not as much as the other pieces.
03:55 And so they're thinking we can use radiotherapy to target that one area,
03:59 and then it's gone.
04:01 When I was younger, I didn't really understand it, but now I do, so...
04:06 It's a lot scarier now.
04:08 She's never been more than two, three months since the age of three
04:12 where she hasn't needed to go to hospital.
04:14 The future looks bleak if we go off what we've been told.
04:18 Eventually, she was going to ask the question, "Am I going to die?"
04:21 And the nurse said, "To be honest with her,"
04:23 and told him that she would never go home.
04:25 She was an amazing person.
04:42 From such a young age, she inspired so many people.
04:45 When you have stuff like this,
04:48 you've just got to make the most of the time you have,
04:51 because it may be too late.
04:53 [BLANK_AUDIO]