Witney Carson’s inaugural season of Dancing With the StarsThe medical diagnosis nearly slowed down the interview. During an interview with PEOPLE,Carson shared with us that she was diagnosed at 19 years old with melanoma (a type of skin cancer) and was about to make her public debut. DWTS. However, the professional ballet dancer didn’t share this diagnosis with Cody Simpson, her partner or the show’s production crew.
Carson recalled the moment she received the news she was joining DWTS She was diagnosed with melanoma in April 2014. She had to undergo two successful surgeries to remove the disease weeks before she left for Los Angeles in 2014. She was able to experience all of these things in a very short time period before joining. DWTSThe production team and her partner were not informed of the situation.
“All of a sudden I get diagnosed with melanoma and of course, being myself, I’m like ‘It’s fine. I can still go on the show,'”Carson stated. Carson explained the reason she kept the news quiet. “I think I was embarrassed only in the fact that I was an athlete and I was supposed to be encompassing everything healthy and fit. I was supposed to be doing all the right things to be an athlete, and so it was embarrassing for me to be like, ‘Yes, I had, I was sick. I was literally sick.’ The producers didn’t know. My partner didn’t know. I wanted people to think I was perfectly healthy.”
Carson had her surgery. They removed her lymph nodes from her left side and a small mole on her foot. Six weeks later, she was headed to DWTS. Her doctor did not clear her “for any active anything,”She continued dancing because she was on the show. “dream”She was one of hers. But she soon learned that she couldn’t go full throttle without some pain.
“So I go, I do the whole routine. I’m like, ‘My foot feels so sweaty. I’m so sweaty. This is so weird,’ and I looked down and my white tennis shoe is just covered in blood, just covered in blood. Ripped my stitches open,”She remembered. “I had to get my foot wrapped every week after I did the live show. So if you go back through the videos, you’ll see my left foot wrapped in gauze.”Carson believes she developed melanoma as a result of tanning bed use in her teens. This is a hereditary condition that her parents both survived. “I have not set foot in a tanning bed since I was diagnosed, which was 19,”Carson agreed. Carson added, “I haven’t set foot in it.
