Sharing her story. Janelle Brown revealed that she was diagnosed with skin cancer after fans pointed out a blemish above her lip in scenes from the new season of Sister Wives.
“I am posting this picture hopefully for awareness. I started to see what looked like a scar develop in an area on my lip where all of my cold sores for the past two decades have erupted. At first I thought it was a new cold sore forming but then it never developed and just stayed,” the Sister Wives star, 51, wrote via Instagram on Monday, March 8. “Over the next year or so it slowly increased in size. I started treating it with every scar medication I could find, thinking it was my body reacting to the years of trauma to that area of my face. … I finally had it checked out. It was a basal cell carcinoma, skin cancer, non malignant, but it still needed to be removed.”
Brown was happy to report that the spot was eventually taken care of and that “all is well.” Along with her good news, the TLC star urged fans to check in on their own skin — no matter how on top of things they are when it comes to SPF.
“You have to know that I am very very careful to always apply sunscreen. I have always burned so easily so really cannot go out, ever, without some sort of protection,” she continued. “This place on my face just looked like scar tissue and because I had cold sores there since my early 20s – it honestly did not occur to me to have it even looked at. I hope this share will be helpful to some. I am sharing to say that, even if it seems like it couldn’t be skin cancer, it doesn’t hurt to have your doctor look at it 💗”
In her caption, Brown said that due to the COVID-19 pandemic her doctor’s appointment was delayed two months. The mother of six previously opened up to Us Weekly about her life during the pandemic, noting in April 2019 that she wished her entire family could be under one roof while quarantining.
“There would be more camaraderie,” she said at the time.
Janelle’s husband, Kody Brown, also chatted with Us in February about his experience with plural marriages throughout a pandemic.
“I feel like my wives are living four separate lives, but I don’t feel like I’m living four separate lives,” he told Us. “I’m sort of strung out on this relationship conveyor belt. … In fact, it seems like my wives are in four different worlds. They’re all actually at different stages of their life,” the Wyoming native, 52, said.
Janelle was originally introduced to Kody by another of his wives, Meri Brown. Though she was not brought up in polygamy, Janelle fell in love with the lifestyle and the pair were “spiritually married” in January 1993. Kody’s other wives are Christine Brown and Robyn Brown.
Sister Wives airs on TLC Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.
