Tragedy has struck the family as Mama June reveals her firstborn has been diagnosed with cancer. The family is now opening up about the battle they are facing and what the future might hold for them.
Keep reading to learn more.
Mama June Shannon and her four children are beloved all over the world. Recently, the family has made a heartbreaking announcement that the eldest child, Mama June’s daughter Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell, is battling stage 4 adrenal carcinoma.
“She’s actually doing pretty good,” Mama June said in an update about her daughter’s health. “She’s handling it pretty good.”
Lauryn “Pumpkin” Efird was also present and agreed, adding that her older sister “genuinely is OK.”
“She can still go to the grocery store, she can drive herself, she’s still able to take the kids to and from places,” Lauryn added, she also noted that Anna “doesn’t have hair, she has no eyebrows, she doesn’t have any hair on her arms or anything like that.”
The family shared that Anna has so far undergone four rounds of chemotherapy.
“A lot of people thought that it was gonna make her sick and stuff like that, [but] she’s able to bounce back pretty quick,” Lauryn said. Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, added to the comment saying, “It does wear her body down sometimes, but other than that, she’s pretty good.”
Anna has two children 10-year-old Kaitlyn and 7-year-old Kylee, and the family says they are getting by as well.
“The 10-year-old is aware, I don’t think she fully understands,” Lauryn share about her niece Kaitlyn. “I think she understands that Mommy is sick and Mommy might not be here for a while… She’s 10, but she’s a lot more mature than that because she’s been raised around older people.”
They shared how the diagnosis and treatment has affected the kids that they are scared of not having their mother around. Mama June said of her grandchild, “Kaitlyn was always close with Anna, but now she doesn’t go anywhere without Anna. I get that because she’s thinking if Anna goes somewhere then maybe Anna might not be at the house when she gets back.”
They shared that Kylee is “too young to understand” what is going on with her mother.
“Yeah,” Mama June said, “she just knows Mama’s sick.”
Now that chemotherapy has ended, Anna’s next course of action are immune therapy or clinical trials. However, she is unsure that she will go ahead with either of them.
“She just wants to see how it’s gonna go,” Mama June said . “We don’t know what to expect because the cancer is very aggressive and it grew from nothing to something huge on the left side of her body really fast.”
Mama June admitted that it is “scary” not knowing what to expect next and “what is going to happen next now when the chemo starts to come out of her body.” Even so, the family tries to take things “one day at a time.”
“For me, it’s an emotional rollercoaster sometimes. Mentally it’s always on my mind,” Mama June said, before she added Anna’s grim prognosis saying, “We know it’s terminal.”
“She’s stage 4. She’s not gonna go into remission,” she said. “We’ve all accepted that, so I just tell people one day at a time ’cause you never know.”
But Lauryn is hopeful about her big sister’s chances. She said, “Honestly, who’s not to say a year from now they’ll have a cure. The medical field is growing every single day. There’s always something,” she said. “Think about how quick they came out with a COVID vaccine and things like that. I truly believe eventually there will be a cure for some kind of cancer.”
Alana aka Honey Boo Boo said the same thing of her big sister, she said, “It is crazy to think that she will not be here probably in five years, but I’m hoping that she can pull through and fight 10, 20 years.”
