Richard Simmons is sharing her skin cancer diagnosis on a story posted on Facebook on Tuesday.
The fitness personality – which recently worried fans with a Facebook post about the deathwho later clarified the importance of valuing life – explained how he noticed a spot on his face, which led him to seek advice from a specialist doctor.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, what’s that little spot? There was a strange lump under my right eye. I had a tube of neosporin that I put in morning and night… it was still there. It was time to call my dermatologist,” Simmons shared. “I sat in his chair and he looked through a magnifying mirror. He told me he would have to scrape it off and put it under the microscope. Now I’m getting a little nervous.”
“He comes back about 20 minutes later and says the C word. You have cancer,” Simmons continued. “I asked him what kind of cancer and he said. Basel cell carcinoma. I told him to stop calling me names. He laughed.”
Simmons explained that she quickly got an appointment with Dr. Ralph A. Massey, a dermatologic and skin cancer surgeon, who explained the steps needed to treat her skin cancer.
“He explained that he needed to burn my skin to remove the cancer cells. There was no numbing, it just had to be done with a small instrument,” Simmons shared. “When he started burning my skin, a tear ran down my cheek. You can’t cry during that and he wiped my tear away. The burning really hurt my skin. It lasted about 30 minutes.”
Simmons was told to “Come back in an hour and a half” to see if he had been successfully removed. After driving around town and finally returning, Simmons said he “came back with some sad news” — it hadn’t been fully removed.
“He burned my face again. This time it was worse than before… It was deeper. This time I didn’t cry, but I gritted my teeth,” Simmons wrote, adding that he was told to wait another 90 minutes and come back. once again.
Simmons concluded his post on a cliffhanger of sorts, telling fans, “…to be continued…”
Skin cancer story comes just one day later Simmons caused concern among his fans when he wrote, “I have some news to tell you. Please don’t be sad. I’m…dying,” Simmons wrote. “Oh, I can see your faces now. The truth is, we are all dying. Every day we live we are getting closer to our death.”
The fitness instructor went on to share recommendations for a healthy lifestyle, including breakfast and dinner suggestions and exercise tips – even suggesting his own YouTube videos. He also suggested to his more than 400,000 Facebook followers to reach out to their loved ones and listen to Tim McGraw’s “Live Like You Were Dying.”
Shortly thereafter, Simmons’ representative Tom Estey released a statement to ET in which he said the fitness guru’s post was meant to be inspirational and not taken literally.
“Richard just wants to be inspiring and that was his intention in today’s post. He is 100% healthy and happy,” said Estey.
In an updated statement posted to his social media channels following fan concerns, he apologized for the confusion and shared that his message was simply intended to remind everyone to live each day as if it could be their last.
“Sorry, many of you were upset by my message today. Even the press contacted me, I’m not dying,” Simmons shared. “It was a message about how we should embrace each day we have.”
Concerns about Simmons’ health have been prevalent for years, as the once public figure has rarely been seen since 2014. The surprising disappearance even spawned a 2022 special, TMZ Investigates: What Really Happened to Richard Simmons. The documentary focused on Simmons’ disappearance from the public eye and also revealed that bad knees are the reason he has stayed out of the spotlight all these years.
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