Nicki Chapman has opened up about her brain tumour ordeal that has left her emotional and upset and previously unable to talk about the situation
Nicki Chapman has been left traumatised by her brain tumour ordeal and she has been left unable to talk about it without being emotional and crying.
The 57-year-old former Pop Idol judge was diagnosed with a non-malignant brain tumour in 2019 and she underwent surgery when the tumour had grown to a size of a small golf ball.
Nicki said that she broke down in tears when she was told in March 2022 that the tumour had disappeared and told The Times : “It makes me cry. I have put my own tumour in a filing cabinet. You do this with a lot of things in life — it will always be there, but I don’t need to keep opening it I won’t let it define me.”
Speaking about the moment when she was told that the tumour had gone, Nicki revealed: “I have had an amazing life and once the bombshell of the tumour dropped, I thought, I don’t want to give this life up. But if this is it? Well — how lucky have I been? And that sounds so glossy, but I was born with the glass half-full. I found a strength to deal with it. It was either take me now or let me live.”
Speaking on the White Wine Question Time podcast, Nicki said: “Back in October I was having my yearly scan with my fantastic consultant, who he knows that I adore him. I tell him regularly in front of my husband how much I adore him and the NHS that looked after me and continue to look after me so well.
“And he rang me, and I was standing in a field, because now we do phone appointments – we don’t do it face to face. So he rang me with my latest scans, and I was standing in a field and the Escape to the Country crew were moved away.”
Nicki added: “I knew I was getting the call, so they moved away, and they gave me some privacy. And I’m looking at all these pigs. The amazing consultant rang me and said ‘the tumour, Nicki, has gone. For the moment it’s disappeared’. I was sobbing. And he was like ‘Nicki, Nicki’. I’m like ‘No, no, no’. I said ‘do we know why?’ He said ‘no, these things happen”‘.
The TV personality continued: “I get a bit teary just thinking about it. And they don’t know why. And obviously I’ve still got to be monitored because these things have habits of changing. So we take the good when we can. Always look for the win in every situation. So Bert for the moment has gone and in the nicest of ways I hope the b****”d never comes back.”
Follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .
