Brooke Burke's kids discovered her cancer diagnosis by accident
Brooke Burke's kids discovered her cancer diagnosis by accident.
The 52-year-old TV star was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2012 and she decided to tell the world about her health battle via a video which she recorded on her phone - but she has now revealed her daughter stumbled across the clip before she had a chance to break the news to her children first.
During an episode of the 'Getting Grilled' podcast, Brooke explained: "It was actually really unfortunate. I decided at that time to record a video to communicate with my audience and to post the video on social media.
"The reason that I did that is because I didn’t want it to be a headline and to start showing up everywhere with, like, that f***** up picture and ‘Brooke has Cancer.’ And I didn’t want it to be that cover story."
However, it all went wrong when one of her kids found it on her phone. She added: "My daughter saw it on my phone before I had posted it. She was like, ‘What the F, mom?’ Like, ‘How could you not tell me?’"
Brooke is mum to daughter Rain, 17, and son Shaya, 16, with her ex-husband David Charvet as well as daughters Neriah, 24, and Sierra, 22, with her ex Garth Fisher.
She went on to explain that after she spoke to her kids about the diagnosis, they al became concerned that she was about to die.
Brooke added: "[he kids] immediately [went] to, ‘Are you gonna die? Are you dying?' I think that’s what people hear when you hear those words that you have cancer. You go, ’Oh, my God, I’m dying.’ And that’s heavy and that’s hard ...
"I think people that are going through cancer, who are fighting that fight, I think it’s tremendously challenging for their family - especially their partners.
"People don’t always realise that and there’s not a lot of support necessarily, you know, there’s [a] tremendous amount of community support within cancer organisations. But what the family goes through, they’re going through it too. They’re going through cancer as well."
She added of her own fight: "I had this healthy lifestyle. I was like, ‘Cancer? What?’ Like, ‘Me?’ And then I decided to become a really great patient and to assemble a proper team and to really get down into caring for myself and finding faith in my own body and in my team. And I'm one of those people now where I never miss a physical."
After her diagnosis, Brooke underwent surgery to remove her thyroid and went on to make a full recovery.
