'Shark Tank' star Daymond John speaks out about his cancer diagnosis
— -- The entrepreneur Daymond John, who catapulted to fame on ABC's "Shark Tank," opened up in an interview with "Good Morning America" today about his diagnosis with stage two thyroid cancer, saying he's now feeling "great."
"I have another half of my thyroid still in and in the event that it comes back, I'll be able to fight it," John told Robin Roberts. "Thyroid is a very slow-growing cancer."
He went on, "I'm good and I want to share this with people because that's what success is. It's staying in your family's lives, it's being around."
John spoke out about his personal medical journey exclusively with "GMA," revealing that a nodule about the size of a marble was found on his thyroid in March 2016 during a checkup. Surgeons removed half of his thyroid and had the nodule biopsied, at which point it revealed that he had stage two thyroid cancer.
While the mastermind behind the brand FUBU will have to monitor his thyroid for the rest of his life, he said that he is trying his best to keep up with all of his public speaking engagements. He added that he considers himself lucky that the cancer was caught early.
"I didn't skip a beat," John said. "I understood that I had a challenge and if I would attack it now, then I wouldn't have let it attack me and I had that removed. I didn't miss anything, I was out partying and dancing two days later, not that I should've but I wanted to share this information with people because what would I have went through if I decided to just stick my head in the sand and go, 'you know what, I'm not going to check into stuff,' I would've really had some big, big problems."
John said he is hoping his story encourages others to actively monitor their health and seek out medical professionals for periodic checkups and tests.
He said it's important to him to one day be able to walk his daughters down the aisle for their weddings.
"I want to be there to protect them and I want to be there for them to keep yelling at me and ignoring me," John joked. "And this is how it happens, by going out and people getting mammograms, colonoscopies...and all the things to find out what's going on. Because you can prevent this, and you can stay around."
He added, "There's a saying: a man with his health has a thousand dreams. A man without his health, only has one."
