Gregg's Last Days During Cancer Battle
- The Real Housewives of Atlanta star NeNe Leakes lost her husband Gregg Leakes in September, to colon cancer; in a new interview with The Real she shares stories from Gregg’s final days.
- Gregg was first diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2018.
- Screening for colon cancer is done via colonoscopy; if you have a history of colon cancer in your family, begin screening at an earlier age.
The hosts ask NeNe at the top of the interview how she’s doing after the reality TV star lost husband Gregg on September 1, 2021, to colon cancer.
Read MoreRelated: Dealing With Grief After a Cancer Diagnosis
She continues, “Once he was able to accept that it was happening he wanted to make peace with it and then he wanted to share the news with his children.” NeNe says it took Gregg a few weeks to pray about his terminal diagnosis and make peace with it. When he was ready to share the news with a wider circle, including his children, he did so.
She explains, “We told all of Gregg's children from his first marriage first.” She says that they told their son Brentt, who lives with them, afterwards. “Gregg spoke to Brentt about his dreams for him as a man,” says NeNe. "And how he wanted him to move as an entrepreneur." As for those final days of life, Gregg wasn’t in any pain, she says. NeNe says he was really talkative, too. “He talked the entire time. It was very beautiful and emotional.”
NeNe recalls, too, how one day they were in Gregg’s office together looking for a form to share with Gregg’s doctor. NeNe saw an envelope taped to the wall and asked her husband if that was the form, and he said no. It turns out, it was a letter written to Brentt in case anything happened to Gregg. "In the letter, he was directing Brentt to the things he wanted Brentt to do [when he passed]. He was taking a lot of pressure off me, which made me really emotional to read it." NeNe calls her husband a “class act,” and praises the way he was always looking out for her in big and small ways like that one.
Gregg’s Battle with Colon Cancer
Gregg Leakes was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2018. To treat his initial bout of the disease, he had chemotherapy and surgery. Common treatments for colon cancer include surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy.
In 2019, Leakes announced that he was cancer-free, but his cancer returned in June of this year, and he had surgery again to treat it. Gregg passed at 66 from in Sept.
Getting Cleaned Out for a Colonoscopy
Screening for Colon Cancer
Screening for colon cancer is done via colonoscopy which looks for polyps small, white, potentially pre-cancerous growths on the colon. 95% of polyps could turn into cancer. So, when one is detected during a colonoscopy, the doctor will send it to a lab to be examined as to whether or not it is precancerous.
Related: Colon Cancer: Overview
While experts don't currently know exactly what causes colon cancer, they do point to certain risk factors. Risk factors for this disease may include one's diet, smoking tobacco, and drinking alcohol. Having a family history of colorectal cancer can also increase the risk.
People with an average risk of developing colon cancer meaning, no history of colon cancer in the family and no history of Lynch syndrome (an inherited syndrome that increases your colon cancer risk) should begin getting colonoscopies at age 45. People with a family history of colon cancer should begin screening before 45.
How Does a Colon Polyp Turn into Cancer?
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