Janice Dickinson has revealed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer two weeks ago.
The former supermodel told the Daily Mail that a doctor found a lump in her right right breast, so she underwent an urgent mammogram and biopsy. The procedure revealed an early stage ductal carcinoma in situ, a common form of breast cancer in the milk ducts.
“It’s still quite shocking,” she said. “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.”
The 61-year-old admitted she became a different person upon hearing of the diagnosis.
“I went into a world of fantasy, kind of a world of process, I kept saying to myself, ‘you’re just processing this,’” she explained. “You can’t be brave and fierce and all the things that people know you from – reality television, from the fashion industry, from being the world’s first supermodel, from being a judge, from being a writer, a photographer, from being an AIDS activist.”
When the doctor found the lump, which “became quite painful when you touch it,” the former “America’s Next Top Model” judge admitted she was scared for her family.
“I became fearful for my two children, my loving fiancé Rocky, we have a grandson, aged four, his name is baby Aby,” she said. “I just thought they are gonna flip out.”
With her mom having died of cancer, Dickinson added that, “‘I had to find the courage I possess as a woman, that we all have as women and then I had to put my chin up and my shoulders back and take it moment by moment.”