- She spoke about her 2018 breast cancer diagnosis for the first time in a new chat
- The supermodel, 58, also revealed she discovered a lump in her chest last year
- After an MRI and a biopsy, it turned out she had cancer in her pectoral muscle
Linda Evangelista has revealed for the first time she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
In a new interview with The Wall Street Journal Magazine, the 58-year-old supermodel spoke out about her December 2018 diagnosis that led to her having a bilateral mastectomy before she found another lump in her chest last year.
Evangelista’s first brush with cancer was detected during her yearly mammogram.
‘The margins were not good, and due to other health factors, without hesitation, because I wanted to put everything behind me and not to have to deal with this, I opted for a bilateral mastectomy. Thinking I was good and set for life. Breast cancer was not going to kill me,’ she said in an interview published on Tuesday.
But unfortunately she had another cancer scare in July last year after discovering a lump in her chest.
The supermodel recalled that her oncologist was ‘unimpressed,’ but she went ahead with an MRI.
What was found during the MRI prompted her doctor to do a biopsy, it turned out she had cancer in her pectoral muscle.
At the time, Evangelista said she told her doctor: ‘Dig a hole in my chest.
‘I don’t want it to look pretty. I want you to excavate. I want to see a hole in my chest when you’re done. Do you understand me? I’m not dying from this.’
Since then she was told by doctors that her prognosis was good, which led her to question why it wasn’t ‘great’ and being informed: ‘Well, once it’s come back, there’s a chance.’
Evangelista said she had ‘a horrible oncotype score,’ which is a number that predicts the likelihood of the cancer coming back.
‘I know I have one foot in the grave, but I’m totally in celebration mode,’ she added.
The supermodel said ‘only a handful of people knew’ about her cancer ordeal.
It’s unclear if she had a breast reconstruction after her bilateral mastectomy.
Evangelista also shed some light on her close relationship with Salma Hayek, who is married to her son’s father, Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault.
The supermodel and Pinault share Augustin James, who is now 16, after the former couple’s brief relationship.
‘I love that woman. She’s a woman’s woman. Just like me, [she’s] so family-oriented, and so positive. She’s a blessing to us…. She was very, very generous and kind to me while I was going through my chemo,’ Evangelista said of Hayek.
But this is not the first health battle that Evangelista has faced, previously she has spoken out about a botched cosmetic procedure that left her face ‘brutally disfigured.’
She spent six years ‘in hiding’ after suffering from a rare reaction to the procedure known as CoolSculpting, which was designed to decrease her fat cells, but instead, made them become enlarged.
