He’s known and loved by Australia as the upbeat and passionate vet, but there’s a lot more to Dr Harry Cooper that the nation hasn’t seen.
WATCH BELOW: Take a tour around Dr Harry’s farm
The TV vet showed a raw and emotional side to himself, as he has opened up about the tragic loss of his eldest daughter Tiffany, during an appearance on Anh’s Brush With Fame.
Dr Harry fought back tears as he recalled the heartbreaking moment he received the news from Tiffany in 2010, after she discovered pain that would later reveal itself as cancer.
Shortly after having welcomed her second child, Tiffany experienced pain in one of her hips, and called her father to ask for advice.
Dr Harry immediately advised his daughter to go see a doctor, but the results were not what they’d hoped.
“The X-ray came back and I said, ‘Read it to me. Read the report.’ It said there was a ‘fuzziness’ on the head of the greater trochanter (between the hip and femur),” Dr Harry said.
WATCH BELOW: Dr Harry Cooper on the tragic loss of his daughter
While Tiffany read out the report to her dad, Dr Harry said he instantly “knew what it meant”.
“I put the phone down and I walked out onto the veranda, and I looked to the sky, and I said, ‘Take me. Children are supposed to outlive their parents. Take me’,” he said.
He explained that with his experience as a vet, he knew the “fuzziness” on the head of the greater trochanter meant that there was a tumour there.
“Any vet in the world could tell you that,” he said.
The tragic news was later confirmed, where Tiffany was diagnosed with colon cancer, and succumbed to the illness in February 2012.
“Nobody quite knew where it had come from, but as it turned out, it was colon cancer…” he said.
“She fought it for 14 months. And then I lost her. And the last thing she said was, ‘I love you, Daddy’.”
After his daughter’s death, Dr Harry told Newscorp that he leaned heavily on his two other children, Tiffany’s husband, and also his partner Susan Sheeran.
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