Janice Dickinson, the supermodel and television personality, says she has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Dickinson told the British newspaper the Daily Mail on Monday: “Just two weeks ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer; it’s hard for me to say this, but I have been diagnosed with breast cancer. It’s still quite shocking. Today I got very scared. . . . I just get very scared and it hit me. But I am not gonna let that define me, the fear. I’m going to get through this. I’ll be just fine, kiddo.”
She said she had begun having stomach trouble and visited a doctor on March 8. Four days later she said she was given the diagnosis. Upon receiving the news, said Dickinson — whose birth year has been variously reported but who is generally believed to be 61 — “I went into a world of fantasy, kind of a world of process. I kept saying to myself, ‘You’re just processing this.’ ”
During the medical exam, she said, a “pea-size” lump was detected in her right breast. “The doctor noticed it immediately,” Dickinson recalled. “She said, ‘This doesn’t feel right.’ And she said, ‘We have to be real comprehensive with this and have it checked out.’ ”
Dickinson, who has been a judge on “America’s Next Top Model,” said, “Initially when the doctor found the lump, it hurt, it became quite painful when you touch it; that’s the point when I knew this is serious, when the doctor touched this little lump in my right breast, about the size of a pea, and I went, ‘Bingo, I have cancer.’ ”
Her prognosis is good, the paper said. Dickinson is planning to have surgery within days to remove a one-inch area of tissue around the lump. Cancer was also detected in some lymph nodes, from which tissue will be removed and tested.
