Italian
Gerry Turner, who starred in the premiere season of ABC’s “The Golden Bachelor,” revealed Wednesday that he was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year.
Turner, 72, was diagnosed with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a form of blood cancer. He opened up to People about it and his split from Theresa Nist, who was the winner of his season of the “Bachelor” senior citizen spinoff. The two were married in a live TV special in January and divorced three months later.
“As Theresa and I were trying very hard to find our lifestyle and where we were going to live and how we were going to make our life work, I was unfortunately diagnosed with cancer,” Turner told People.
The diagnosis came after he visited an orthopedic surgeon to treat a shoulder injury.
Popular on Variety “Finally I got around to going [to the doctor] and the orthopedic surgeon said, ‘Yeah Gerry, there’s not much we can do for your shoulder, but there are some unusual blood markers here.’” And so an orthopedic surgeon went to my family doctor, my family doctor referred me to an oncologist, and now I’m working with a hematology-oncology group in Fort Wayne,” he said. “Unfortunately, there’s no cure for it. So that weighs heavily in every decision I make. It was like 10 tons of concrete were just dropped on me. And I was a bit in denial for a while, I didn’t want to admit to it.”
Turner shared the news with Nist in February, and his diagnosis became more definitive in March.
“Certainly, it was hard for me. But the conversation was brief and I think [she was] a little bit awestruck by the news. So understandable,” he said. “I wanted my life to continue on as normal as possible, and that led me to believing that as normal as possible more meant spending time with my family, my two daughters, my two son-in-laws, my granddaughters. And the importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority.”
Turner added, about their “Golden Bachelor” relationship, “That glamour and starstruck, whirlwind time was really a cherished memory. It was wonderful, and I certainly wish it would’ve had a different ending, that we would’ve found our way, that we would’ve found solutions to a problem. And most of all, that I would not have had a diagnosis that so strongly influenced my decisions and the direction I went.”
