Survivor star Ken McNickle has revealed that he is battling cancer. <\/p>\n
The 43-year-old reality star rose to fame when he competed on US Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X, and came in second place.<\/p>\n
He shared his tragic diagnosis on Instagram, revealing that he had been diagnosed with cancer, and wished he had taken care of himself \u201cbetter and sooner.\u201d <\/p>\n
He told his followers: \u201cAs I\u2019ve said before, if you have a health concern, don\u2019t sit on it. Get yourself checked. There\u2019s no valid reason not to. Not one.\u201d<\/p>\n
While he did not disclose which type of cancer he was battling, he did share some of the symptoms he had been suffering from before he was diagnosed. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve made some mistakes in the process and should have taken care of myself better and sooner.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen the flood of questions. Why now? What did I do to deserve this? Why didn\u2019t I come in sooner? After everything else, now this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always a choice. And I\u2019m choosing optimism, health, happiness and the knowing that the spirit has me. And most importantly I\u2019m choosing love.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added in a later post: \u201cI waited almost a year until my skin was tearing open to get this checked. Had I gone in sooner, it would have been a simple procedure,\u201d McNickle explained. \u201cNot a three-inch hole in my chest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reality star\u2019s followers rushed to share their support from the star, with Adam Klein, who won the season of Survivor that McNickle competed on, saying: \u201cI\u2019m deeply sorry Ken that you have to go through this. You are a strong, resilient person and cancer f**ked with the wrong guy. You got this. Sending healing energy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another supporter wrote: \u201cYou got this! There is always something beautiful. Behind every difficult situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reality star revealed that doctors told him the problem could have been far easier to treat had he sought help sooner instead of delaying. <\/p>\n
He shared that he had seen blood in his stool for months, but still delayed having a growing lump checked by a medical professional.<\/p>\n
McNickle said his reluctance to seek treatment had been shaped by attitudes towards toughness and masculinity he had grown up with.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s an epidemic in regards to men\u2019s health and we\u2019re not giving it enough attention,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to be talking more about why men are 50 per cent less likely to go to a doctor for physical ailments and 60 per cent less likely to get help with mental and emotional issues. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhy do you think it is? What\u2019s [sic] needs to change?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Survivor star Ken McNickle has revealed that he is battling cancer. The 43-year-old reality star rose to fame…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-463876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}