Supermodel Janice Dickinson, who is currently fighting a legal battle against Bill Cosby over comments made regarding an alleged sexual assault, has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Dickinson discovered what she described as a pea-sized lump in her breast at a routine doctor’s appointment on 12 March. Following a biopsy and mammogram, she was told that she had a non-invasive ductal carcinoma – a common form of breast cancer which usually responds well to treatment. She will undergo surgery to remove the lump, as well as radiotherapy.
“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,” Dickinson told the Mail Online.
“I’m going to get through this,” she added. “I’m going to be just fine, kiddo.”
“‘Don’t feel sorry for me, this is not a pity party,” she said. “I’m Janice Dickinson and I’m gonna stick around for a long, long time. You ain’t getting rid of me yet.”
Asked by the Mail about her prognosis, Dickinson said: “I don’t know what the doctors really told me because it goes in one ear out the other, that’s how I roll.”
Dickinson is currently suing Cosby for defamation over comments the disgraced former comedian’s attorney made after she came forward to join more than three dozen other women who have accused Cosby of sexually assaulting them.
She said in November 2014 that Cosby had drugged and then raped her in a hotel room in Lake Tahoe in the 1980s. According to the complaint in her defamation suit, she did not come forward at the time for fear of retaliation by Cosby.
Dickinson, who is 61, is often described as being the world’s first supermodel – a term she claims to have invented. She was a judge on America’s Next Top Model, and owned her own modelling agency, the Janice Dickinson Modelling Agency, about which there was a reality TV show.
Her cancer treatment will also be followed by cameras; a reality TV show called The Doctors will follow her through every step of her treatment.