A difficult time. Michael Jackson’s ex-wife Debbie Rowe has been diagnosed with breast cancer, Us Weekly has confirmed.
The 57-year-old former nurse who was married to the “Thriller” singer for three years until 1999, was recently diagnosed with the disease, TMZ was the first to report. She is undergoing treatment.
Rowe met Jackson while working as a nurse at Dr. Arnold Klein’s dermatology practice, where the King of Pop was being treated for vitiligo. They got together shortly after he split from Lisa Marie Presley, when Rowe offered to help Jackson become a father.
She gave birth to two his two eldest children, Prince, now 19, and Paris, now 18, during their marriage. When she divorced Jackson, she signed over all parental rights to him.
After Jackson’s death in 2009, Rowe sought and was granted supervised visitation rights to the kids, though her relationship with her children has had its ups and downs. As Us reported previously, Rowe was present at Paris’ 18th birthday party back in April, where the teen celebrated her coming of age by smooching her boyfriend, Michael Snoddy, in a photo the drummer shared on his Instagram page.
Rowe’s recent diagnosis comes two years after the former nurse suffered another cancer scare.
On that occasion, the scare turned out to be sarcoidosis (an autoimmune disease that is not life-threatening). After she got the news she did not have cancer, Rowe agreed to marry longtime friend (and Jackson’s former business manager) Marc Schaffel, who she had refused to marry when she first discovered she was ill.
