Olivia Newton-John reveals she's fighting her stage 4 breast cancer with homegrown cannabis
Olivia Newton-John is a firm believer of healing in private. It recently came to be known that the Australian singing sensation was dealing with a second bout of breast cancer. The star has now revealed why she made the decision to keep the news of the diagnosis private, instead of sharing her well-wishers around the world.
The 'Grease' star said at the Today Show that she wanted to avoid “speculation.” She elaborated: “I just decided I wanted to go through it myself. And I did a lot of natural healing and a lot of herbs that my husband [John Easterling] made for me.”
As fans would know, the 70-year-old revealed in September 2018 that she was battling the illness for the third time in three decades. “I’m one of millions in this fight … in this journey,” she said, as reported by Us Weekly.
Newton-John continued, “A lot of people see it as a fight, and [however] you choose to see it, that’s your prerogative. … I see it as part of my mission.” The actress, while speaking about her illness, explained that a tumor was found on her lower back in 2017.
However, she has resorted to natural treatment methods. “A lot of cannabis, my husband grows for me. In California, it’s legal to grow a certain amount of plants for your own medicinal purposes,” she noted. “He makes me tinctures … and they help with pain, they help with sleep. So, I’m very lucky that I live in a state where it’s legal and that I have a husband that is a plant medicine man.”
The actress previously battled breast cancer in 1992 before undergoing a partial mastectomy and reconstruction surgery and was diagnosed with the illness for the second time in 2013. But the 'Physical' songstress has kept a positive outlook amid her health struggles all this while.
“I’m not going to be one of those statistics, I’m going to be fine,” she told Australia’s Today show in September 2017. “I’ll probably deal with this in my life as an ongoing thing. I think that you can live with cancer like you can live with other things if you take care of yourself.”
Apart from battling cancer, there was also a certain period when, at the height of her fame, Newton-John's life was marred by Louisiana-based Michael Owen Perry, as well as Wisconsin-born Ralph Nau, who became obsessed with killing her. In fact, the situation with Michael stalking the singer got so bad after a point that she had to flee her residence in California in order to keep herself safe.
