Fitness guru Richard Simmons this week announced his diagnosis with skin cancer, just after quelling fears he was dying.
The reclusive personality, 75, on Tuesday revealed in a Facebook post how he discovered a “blemish” on his face was actually cancerous.
“Mirror mirror on the wall what’s that blemish which is so small? There was this strange looking bump under my right eye. I had a tube of Neosporin which I would put on [in] the morning and the evening….it was still there,” he said.
Simmons recalled a subsequent nerve-wracking trip to the dermatologist, where the doctor needed “to scrape it and put it under the microscope.”
Within 20 minutes, Simmons was informed he had basal cell carcinoma. Though the Mayo Clinic notes this often presents as a “transparent bump” on parts of the skin exposed to the sun, like the head or neck, it can take other forms.
“I told him to stop calling me dirty names. He laughed,” said Simmons, who then went to cosmetic and skin cancer surgeon Dr. Ralph Massey to have the bump burnt “to remove the cancer cells.
“The burning really hurt my skin,” he wrote, noting he had to repeat the process as the doctor had yet to “get it all out.”
“This time was worse than before…It was deeper. I did not cry this time but I did grit my teeth.”
Simmons on Monday scared his followers when he posted that he was “dying.”
“The truth is we all are dying,” he added. “Every day we live we are getting closer to our death,” he said reminding followers to “tell the ones that you love that you love them.”
In the hours leading up to announcing his diagnosis, Simmons issued an apology “for this confusion, noting: “I am not dying. It was a message about saying how we should embrace every day that we have.”
Simmons has made headlines several times in recent months amid news that Pauly Shore would portray him in an upcoming film, “The Court Jester,” a film for which Simmons said he had “never given my permission.”
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