Terry Bradshaw is a five-year cancer survivor. But he says that he is more terrified of the disease now than he was when he was first diagnosed back in 2021.
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Bradshaw Admits He's Scared of Potential Cancer Return
Terry has survived not one but two battles with two different kinds of cancer. And even though the cancer is now in remission, he and his wife both admit they are fearful. That the cancer could eventually return.
"I'm not going to lie to you. I'm waiting on it to return," the NFL legend said in an October 2026 sit-down with PEOPLE. "Seriously, I am more scared now than I was the day I found out I had cancer."
Bradshaw's initial cancer diagnosis came in November 2021. After noticing that he was urinating more frequently, the Super Bowl champ and his wife, Tammy, consulted with his urologist. The urologist confirmed that he had early-stage bladder cancer.
"[The urologist] comes back [after testing] and goes, 'Well, there's a spot, and I think we need to biopsy it,' "Tammy recalled to the outlet. "So we did, and he called me two days later and said, 'Okay, it's positive. It is bladder cancer, but we've caught it very, very early. We can do the treatment. Everything should be fine.' And we were both pretty reassured by that."
NFL Legend Battled Two Different Cancers
The bladder cancer was successfully treated. However, three months later came another gut punch. Bradshaw began feeling pain in his neck. And after consulting with physicians, a malignant tumor was found on the NFL legend's neck. Doctors officially diagnosed it as Merkel cell carcinoma in March 2022. This is an aggressive type of skin cancer.
Tammy recalled that after receiving the news of Terry's skin cancer, she was "really scared." But together she and her husband curated a battle plan to successfully ward off the disease.
"I said, 'Okay, here's what it is, and here's how rare it is, and here are the statistics, and here's how it's treated. And it is treatable. Statistically, it's treatable, and it is statistically possible to cure it, but we're going to have to really fight hard on this one," she said to the outlet.
Today, Terry is cancer-free.
