Brooke Burke recently took some time to reflect on her 2012 thyroid cancer diagnosis and how she went about breaking the news to her family, friends, and loved ones. As she recalls, as she was preparing to "tell her own story" before the media caught wind of her cancer diagnosis, her children accidentally found out about it before she could tell them herself — a situation she describes as “really unfortunate."
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She was preparing to share her diagnosis through a YouTube video.
At the time, the now 52-year-old television personality had made the decision to share the news in a YouTube video. “I didn't want it to be a headline and to start showing up everywhere with, like, that [expletive] up picture and ‘Brooke has cancer,’“ she explained on Curtis Stone's Getting Grilled podcast. "I decided to tell my own story."
But her daughter found out beforehand.
Brooke's daughter accidentally beat her to the punch, finding out about her cancer diagnosis by accident. “My daughter saw it on my phone before I had posted it," she shared. "She was like, ‘What the F, mom? Like, how could you not tell me?’“
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Her kids were afraid she was dying.
Brooke says her kids “immediately [went] to, ‘Are you gonna die? Are you dying?’“ and were concerned about how serious the cancer was. “And I think that's what people hear when you hear those words that ‘You have cancer.’ You go, ’Ooh my God, I'm dying.’ And that's heavy and that's hard.”
Brooke talked more about how the diagnosis affected her and her loved ones.
The Dancing with the Stars alum shared that a cancer diagnosis is something that has an impact on the entire family. “What the family goes through… they're going through cancer as well,” she said.
Her family includes daughter Rain, 17, and son Shaya, 16, whom she shares with ex-husband David Charvet, along with daughters Neriah, 24, and Sierra, 22, whom she shares with ex-husband Garth Fisher.
Cancer taught her some things.
The mother also called cancer a “learning lesson” for her. “There's something larger and greater than me. I live this healthy life. I was like, ’Cancer, what? Like, me?’" she shared, referring to her not understanding how she ended up with cancer in the first place. “I was like, I don't even have time for cancer. Like, what?"
She says now she never misses a doctor's visit.
"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," she explained.
Upon connecting with others who also had thyroid cancer, Brooke shared, “I realized how many people have never had a physical. I'm telling you, it's that two-hour, really annoying, time-consuming, possibly expensive physical that's gonna give you some life-changing, life-saving information."
