Linda Evangelista has revealed her secret battle with breast cancer, saying she has undergone a mastectomy and chemotherapy in a bid to beat the disease — but still fears for her future.
The supermodel, 58, disclosed her harrowing health ordeal in a latest interview with WSJ Magazine on Tuesday, revealing that doctors first detected the cancer during an annual mammogram in Dec. 2018
“The margins weren’t good, and attributable to other health aspects, without hesitation, because I desired to put the whole lot behind me and never to need to cope with this, I opted for a bilateral mastectomy,” Evangelista told the publication.
The catwalk queen subsequently believed she was cancer-free and “set for all times” — but her troubles were just starting.
In Oct. 2022, the mother-of-one discovered a lump on her chest and immediately had an MRI scan. The outcomes revealed there was cancer in her pectoral muscle.
“Dig a hole in my chest,” Evangelista recalled telling her surgeon. “I don’t want it to look pretty. I would like you to excavate. I would like to see a hole in my chest whenever you’re done. Do you understand me? I’m not dying from this.”
Evangelista subsequently underwent radiation and chemotherapy, which caused her to lose her hair.
“That is all latest hair,” she told WSJ Magazine. “It got here back very dark. It’s even curlier than it was once. The primary time, I lost all of the hair on top of my head, like my grandfather did.”
After completing treatment, the Canada-born model was told that her prognosis was “good” — a word which still alarms her.
“Not ‘great’? Why isn’t it great?” she asked her surgeon, who told her: “Once it’s come back, there’s a probability [it will return again].”
While she is now in remission, Evangelista says she has a “horrible Oncotype rating” — a number that represents the reoccurrence risk of cancer.
Together with her future “uncertain,” Evangelista believes day-after-day is “previous.”
“I do know I even have one foot within the grave, but I’m totally in celebration mode,” she declared.
Evangelista is mom to 16-year-old son Augustin, whom she shares along with her billionaire ex, François-Henri Pinault.
The supermodel didn’t disclose how her son has dealt along with her cancer battle, but she did open up about mixing families with Pinault.
The French businessman is now married to Salma Hayek, with whom he shares a daughter.
“I like that woman,” Evangelista enthused of the “Frida” actress. “She’s a lady’s woman. Identical to me, [she’s] so family-oriented, and so positive. She’s a blessing to us…. She was very, very generous and type to me while I used to be going through my chemo.”
Meanwhile, Evangelista told WSJ Magazine that she kept the cancer battle private in a bid to avoid media scrutiny.
“I’ve kept it quiet. Only a handful of individuals knew. And I’m just not one among those individuals who has to share the whole lot,” she stated, “I assumed to myself, I’ll share this in the future but while I’m going through it, absolutely not. I don’t want the Each day Mail waiting outside my door like they do each time something happens.”
Several years ago, Evangelista retreated from the limelight after claiming a cosmetic “fat-freezing” procedure by CoolScultping left her “permanently deformed” and “brutally disfigured.”
She filed a $50 million lawsuit against CoolSculpting’s owner for emotional distress and lost income, which she settled in July last yr.
Speaking of the procedure in her interview with The Wall Street Journal Magazine, Evangelista regrets that she succumbed to the temptation to tinker along with her physical appearance.
Evangelista had only done what countless others have. Yet she has expressed feelings of shame and embarrassment. Did she really do anything fallacious?
“I took a drink of the magic potion,” she stated. “It just backfired on me.”
Now, Evangelista is back within the highlight ahead of the discharge of the AppleTV+ docuseries, “The Supermodels,” which hits the steamer on Sept. 20.
The series traces the rise of Evangelista and her contemporaries, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell. The quartet of catwalk queens appears within the September issue of Vogue.
