'Cancer won't block my future I'm feeling excited'

MAFS love expert Mel Schilling on "taking one day at a time" following her recent diagnosis

- AMY JONES

Mel Schilling is known for her warm, honest advice as a dating expert on Channel 4’s Married At First Sight. But away from the glamorous reality show, she has been battling colon cancer and tells new there have been times when she “could have gone to that dark place”.

The 52-year-old was diagnosed with the disease just before Christmas last year, having noticed changes while she was filming MAFS in Australia.

“It was November when things really started to escalate. I was on set and I was doubled over in pain,” Mel remembers.

“I just kept putting it down to travel, I knew I was run down. Last year was probably the biggest year of my career – I knew I was exhausted so I just kept saying to myself, ‘That’s all it is, I’m overtired and jet-lagged.’

“My digestive system was complaining at that point and I was starting to get cramps.”

Having started HRT (hormone replacement therapy) six months before, Mel wondered if that could have been the cause of the discomfort as her body adjusted and at one point she also thought it was period pain.

“I didn’t pay enough attention to it,” Mel admits. “I think as women, we do this because we so often have pain in our abdominal area that it has become normalised.”

She says, “I was doubled over and shouting – the pain was so intense.”

In a break from filming, Mel visited a GP in Australia who put her symptoms down to constipation, sending her away with “sachets of medicine”, and telling her she’d be fine.

Wrapping up the show in Oz, Mel says, “I managed to get through the final night of filming MAFS, and I don’t know how, and returned to the UK.”