Former supermodel and Bill Cosby accuser Janice Dickinson has revealed in a video interview that she has breast cancer.
According to DailyMail.com, the American outpost of the British tabloid, Dickinson disclosed in an “emotional” interview that she was diagnosed on March 12 after her doctor found a lump in her right breast during a routine medical exam.
As is the norm for such a diagnosis, Dickinson had a mammogram and a biopsy, which found she has early-stage ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a common form of breast cancer that originates in the milk ducts but hasn’t spread. It is usually treated with a lumpectomy and radiation, and is not considered life-threatening.
The news came just a day before Dickinson’s ongoing defamation case against Cosby was due in court again in Los Angeles for a hearing on Cosby’s latest motion to dismiss. Dickinson’s lawsuit if one of several filed by some of the five-dozen women who have accused him of drugging and/or raping them in episodes dating back decades.
Dickinson, 61, has been one of the most outspoken of Cosby’s accusers since she went public in 2014 with her story that he drugged and raped her in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 1982.
Soon after she joined the growing number of accusers, she went on Entertainment Tonight and on CNN for interviews in which she was emotional, furious and used profanity. She called Cosby a “pig,” a “monster” and a “rapist,” among other epithets.
Dickinson held back tears during the DailyMail.com interview. Sometimes called the “first supermodel,” she said she feels like she has entered a “nightmarish dream” since the diagnosis.
“Just two weeks ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” she said. “It’s still quite shocking. Today I got very scared… I just get very scared and it hit me. But I am not gonna let that define me, the fear. I’m going to get through this, I’ll be just fine, kiddo.”
Dickinson’s lawyer in the Cosby defamation suit, Lisa Bloom, said she could not comment on her client’s medical condition.
