Hannah Brown Gets Candid about Being Diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer at 11

Hannah Brown is getting candid about her pancreatic cancer diagnosis!

In the newly released episode of Off The Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe on July 18, 2023, the former Bachelorette candidly opened up about her battle with pancreatic cancer, that too when she was only 11 years of age.

Brown told Bristowe that she had a big scare when she was young and got really sick really fast. She stated, “I got really sick really fast where — I still think it’s like a weird medical mystery of what caused them to find it — because I got my period really early but just one time.”

She continued by saying that she was having bad stomach cramps, but was also having horrible stomach issues to the point where she couldn’t go to school, doubled over in pain, and couldn’t even go to the bathroom.

The now-28-year-old Alabama native explained to her fellow former Bachelorette that her health was declining to the point that it could still be seen whenever she looked back at her photos of that time.

Finally, her primary care physician suggested that her family conduct a full-body scan as it wasn’t sure why Brown was suffering even after visiting multiple experts. And it was after the results of her full-body scan that Brown learned she was diagnosed with cancer.

She stated, “I had an encased malignant tumor. I hate to say it because there’s people that have really gone through the battle of cancer and I was very fortunate that my doctor was able to get out my encased tumor fully.”

“If it would have burst or something was left, it could’ve been a lot worse. It was very quick. I found out I had it, two weeks later having the surgery. I really didn’t go to school much my fifth-grade year,” she added.

Brown previously talked about her cancer diagnosis in her memoir titled God Bless This Mess. In her book, she wrote that she frequently struggled with unexplained and frequent stomachaches.

And after doing an MRI of her stomach, she learned she had “a tumor the size of an egg” on her pancreas. “They sent me for a biopsy, and a day or so later, my dad got a call with the results — not from our regular doctor, but from an oncologist.”

“The tumor was malignant. Cancer. Pancreatic cancer — one of the deadliest forms of cancer there is,” she further wrote in her memoir. Thankfully, her cancer hadn’t spread out of her pancreas, making the treatment process easier.

However, The Bachelorette star recalled her parents being distraught before and while she was taken into surgery. She continued writing, “On the day of my surgery, I wasn’t scared about what was going to happen to me. At all.”

A picture of Hannah Brown when she was a child (Photo: Instagram)

“Even though my mother was in tears and my dad looked as worried as I’d ever seen him in my life as the nurses came to wheel me into the operating room, I looked up at my mom from my hospital bed and said, ‘Mama, I’m going to be okay,’” she added.

And although Brown wasn’t scared, she did have one fear: the chance of going through radiation and chemotherapy, depending on what the surgeons found after they took her inside the operating room. “But miraculously, I didn’t need either one,” she wrote with relief.

After the surgery was conducted successfully, she was declared cancer-free. After that, she went to a couple of follow-ups for a year or two, but nothing else ever turned up in her scans or bloodwork.