So now we know. After weeks of flying into sudden rages, forgetting patients names, struggling with his passwords and prepping people for operations they dont actually need, Holby Citys Ric Griffin (Hugh Quarshie) has discovered whats wrong with him. He doesnt have dementia, as he feared. He has a brain tumour.
This isnt Rics first brush with mortality. In 2010 he was diagnosed with cancer. He had surgery but didnt want any further treatment, planning to let nature take its course. He changed his mind, but by March 2011 it seemed that the treatment had stopped working and the cancer had spread. The only option was to have surgery that was so high-risk that the survival rate was only 5% – unless the surgeon was Henrik Hanssen, in which case the chance of not dying shot up to a not entirely reassuring 10%.
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Ric wasnt convinced by these statistics, but was persuaded to have the surgery because his daughter Jess was about to give birth and he wanted to be around to support her. The surgery was so high-risk that Ric even recorded a video for the grandchild he might never see beforehand. With the top team of Elliot Hope and Henrik Hanssen operating on him, though, he made a full recovery and woke up to meet his new grandson whod been born as the surgeons battled to save Ric.
Now the longest-serving doctor in Holby faces another life-threatening illness – and, in a tragic parallel, its happening just as another Griffin family baby has been born and Darla (Naomi Katiyo) needs him to be there for her. The clues that we can glean from the Autumn trailer are not encouraging, featuring as they do Ric encountering former love Diane Lloyd (Patricia Potter) – whos been dead since 2007!
The sequence has a strange, otherworldly atmosphere and theres another quick glimpse of Diane and another figure, who may be Rics late son Leo (which would be incredibly poignant), dressed in angelic white, leaning over Ric – who appears to be asleep or even (dare we say it?) dead. Is Ric dreaming? Or is he dead and in some sort of afterlife?
Some hope appears in the form of new consultant neurosurgeon and hospital CEO Max McGerry (Jo Martin) who will operate on the tumour that she describes as a biggie. Could this be the second time Rics life is saved by a CEO/surgeon? Fingers crossed, but as we see Max and Serena (Catherine Russell) anxiously call for the defibrillator during Rics sRead More – Source
