Gerry Turner, star of the “The Golden Bachelor,” says he’s been diagnosed with an incurable form of bone marrow cancer.
The 72-year-old father of two broke the news in an interview with People, explaining that he found out after visiting an orthopedic surgeon to address an old shoulder injury.
“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,’” he told People. “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.”
Turner says he was diagnosed with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a disease that changes white blood cells into cancer cells that build up in the bone marrow, according to the Mayo Clinic. This type of cancer grows slowly and “may not cause symptoms for years.”
“Unfortunately, there’s no cure for it. So that weighs heavily in every decision I make,” Turner told People. “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.”
While he was reluctant to speak on it at first, Turner shared with People that getting involved with various charities and fundraisers inspired him to open up about his diagnosis and how it played a part in his divorce from Theresa Nist. He married Nist on live TV in January after giving her his final rose on his season of ABC’s reality dating show, “The Golden Bachelor.”
Three months after their televised marriage, Turner filed for divorce. On the same day as his filing, the newlyweds announced their decision to divorce during a joint interview on Good Morning America.
At the time, Turner and Nist attributed their breakup to an inability to agree on a place to settle down, as the two live near their families in Indiana and New Jersey, respectively.
But now, Turner revealed that his cancer diagnosis came just as the couple was working to figure out their new lifestyle and that he no longer believed that uprooting his life and moving to a new location with Nist was the best decision.
“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,” he said. “And the importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority.”
After the couple’s divorce announcement, rumors spread about what could have led to their breakup. Turner told People he hopes news of his diagnosis will compel the public to “look at things a little bit differently now.”
“When you are hit with that kind of news and the shock wears off after a few days or a few weeks and you regroup and you realize what’s important to you, that’s where you start to move forward,” he said to People. “And I hope that people understand in retrospect now that that had a huge bearing on my decisions and I think probably Theresa’s as well.”
Nist, however, shared a different perspective with People, saying Turner’s diagnosis “wasn’t a factor” in ending the relationship.
“If that was something on his part, maybe, I don’t know. But no, that didn’t factor into ending the relationship,” she said to People. “Part of it was the distance, but that wasn’t the only part. That’s really all I will say.”
Nist also told People that four weeks is a “very short span of time to get to know someone, and it’s a very accelerated pace.”
“During that four weeks, it’s not that you’re with that person every day anyway,” she said. “There were only certain times that I was with him one-on-one.”
As Jan. 4 – the ex-couple’s wedding anniversary – approaches, Nist told People that the occasion is “bittersweet.”
She shared that before their divorce, she and Turner had made plans to move together to Charleston, South Carolina.
“I really wanted a home together. I wanted the joy of being in a home together and designing a home together,” she told People. “I really thought that was going to be phenomenal. I was looking forward to that so much.”
But after some online house hunting over email that never resulted in a commitment, “the emails just stopped, [and] we weren’t looking anymore,” Nist said to People.
Despite this, Nist told People that she wishes Turner the best and knows he was in a “very difficult situation.”
Turner wished her the same, calling their time together 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,” he told People. “And most of all, that I would not have had a diagnosis that so strongly influenced my decisions and the direction I went.”
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