Brown, 50, was told in April she had cancer in her left breast, despite years of clear mammograms. A month later she had a mastectomy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a tendency to have a mammogram and think, \u2018oh, yep, that\u2019s done for the year. Don\u2019t need to worry about that\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this happened to me in between mammograms,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was probably there for a good couple of years being evasive and not being picked up because of the way that it grows, which is like a very thin web-like cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Zealand television personality Jaquie Brown was diagnosed with cancer. Photo \/ Jaquie Brown<\/p>\n
Brown shared the news in a Facebook post last week. The response from fans and friends was overwhelming, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like a reverse funeral. Because when you die, you never hear what people really thought of you or any kind of kind comments. Not that I\u2019m going to die any time soon, but it was a beautiful way for me to, you know, read such lovely, supportive comments. And it really was, you know, affirming and beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown said she had been fit and healthy, but one day noticed in the mirror \u201ca small dent on the underside of my left boob\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just put it down to weight loss, because I\u2019ve been going to the gym a lot, and I sort of ignored it and then I was sitting on the couch, maybe a couple months later, and I brushed my arm across, and I felt an actual pea-sized lump. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I panicked. I went into deep research mode. It was terrifying. I\u2019ve never felt that before. I\u2019ve never felt a lump before, and I\u2019ve never felt the fear before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Days later Brown saw a specialist and biopsy reports revealed she had cancer in her left breast and a full mastectomy was to follow.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just, what? Are you? No, come on. Where\u2019s the? What? Come on. This has to be, you\u2019ve got it wrong. I\u2019m so healthy. I\u2019m so healthy. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere were so many thoughts going through my head. Am I going to survive? How bad is it? What do I tell the kids? And then of course, my thought went to Dai [Henwood] of all the work that we did together.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2023, Brown interviewed her friend, comedian Dai Henwood, about his cancer diagnosis on TV3\u2019s The Project. She also wrote her friend\u2019s memoir, The Life of Dai, in 2024.<\/p>\n
A screenshot from Dai Henwood’s Live and Let Dai series.<\/p>\n
Henwood lives with stage four bowel cancer which had spread to his liver and lungs. He was diagnosed in 2020 when the country was in lockdown.<\/p>\n
Brown has been put into \u201cchemical menopause \u2026 I\u2019m just going through it\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s bumpy, and I\u2019m emotional, and I\u2019m trying my best. It is hard some days. But the thing I found the most alarming was that I had clear mammograms, and it was still there, this particular type of cancer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to encourage all New Zealand women not to think, just not to cause alarm, not to freak anybody out, but to stay in touch with your boobs. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou look at them, talk to them, love them, squeeze them, know what your normal is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brown, 50, was told in April she had cancer in her left breast, despite years of clear mammograms.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6256,226947,2534,430,16719,156,31989,302,284187,111,139,69,90,29374,21501,437],"class_list":["post-578673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-brown","tag-bumpy","tag-cancer","tag-celebrities","tag-emotional","tag-entertainment","tag-im","tag-its","tag-jaquie","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-personality","tag-reveal","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578673","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=578673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}