Hannah Brown Opens Up About The Heartbreaking Diagnosis She Got As A Child
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This article contains mention of violence.
Hannah Brown is enjoying the success of her TV career, but "The Bachelorette" alum had a traumatic childhood. Amid other revelations, in her memoir "God Bless This Mess: Learning to Live and Love Through Life's Best (and Worst) Moments" (via Us Weekly), released on November 23, Brown opened up about losing her aunt, LeeLee, and two young cousins to violent crime when she was six years old. The mother and children were murdered by a man who was living in a trailer on the family's property, Us Weekly relayed. The man had been in prison for a nonviolent offense and was working on the family's home as part of a work-release program, according to the report.
"[C]oming that close to something so awful, so terrifying — it was a turning point for me. It changed everything. I was no longer living in the innocence of an untouched childhood," Brown wrote (via E! News). As a young child, the "Dancing with the Stars" winner lacked the tools to understand the situation clearly. The former Miss Alabama began to feel terrified. "I wasn't scared of monsters under my bed; I was scared of someone being in my closet, sneaking into my window, breaking through our front door to kill my family. Not a monster. A man," Brown described (via the Daily Mail).
As if that was not enough, Brown's childhood troubles wouldn't stop there.
Hannah Brown was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at age 11
Hannah Brown was just 11 years old when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In her memoir (via Page Six), "The Bachelor" alum revealed how doctors discovered "a tumor the size of an egg" when she went in for an MRI. Brown was seeing doctors in an attempt to get to the bottom of the persistent pain she had in her stomach area. As pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest types of cancer there is, according to WebMD, Brown's family was terrified when her father received a call not from their family physician but from an oncologist, she wrote in the book.
Unlike her parents, Brown took the news surprisingly well. That was because the oncologist assessed that the malignant tumor had not metastasized (via Page Six). "On the day of my surgery, I wasn't scared about what was going to happen to me. At all. Even though my mother was in tears and my dad looked as worried as I'd ever seen him in my life as the nurses came to wheel me into the operating room, I looked up at my mom from my hospital bed and said, 'Mama, I'm going to be okay,'" Brown detailed.
Knowing deep down everything would go fine, Brown then worried about going bald. But the surgeons successfully removed the tumor in its entirety, preventing Brown from having to undergo chemotherapy or radiation, according to ET Online.