The star of “The Golden Bachelor,” Gerry Turner, has been told that he has an incurable type of bone marrow cancer.
In an interview with People, the 72-year-old father of two revealed the information, saying he learned about it after seeing an orthopedic physician for a long-standing shoulder ailment.
“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 stated to 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.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, Turner claims he was given a diagnosis of Waldenstr m s macroglobulinemia, a condition that causes white blood cells to develop into cancerous cells that accumulate in the bone marrow. Slow-growing, this kind of cancer “may not cause symptoms for years.”
“Sadly, there isn’t a treatment for it. Therefore, that is a major consideration in all of my decisions,” Turner told People. “I felt as though ten tons of concrete had just fallen on me. And for a time, I was somewhat in denial because I didn’t want to acknowledge it.”
Although he was first hesitant to talk about it, Turner told People that his involvement with different organizations and fundraising events encouraged him to talk about his disease and how it contributed to his separation from Theresa Nist. After giving Nist his last rose during his season of ABC’s reality dating show, “The Golden Bachelor,” he wed her live on television in January.
Turner filed for divorce three months after their marriage was shown on television. The newlyweds made their divorce announcement in a joint Good Morning America interview on the same day as his filing.
Since they both live close to their families in Indiana and New Jersey, respectively, Turner and Nist at the time blamed their split on their inability to agree on a place to call home.
However, Turner recently disclosed that he no longer thought that uprooting his life and moving to a new place with Nist was the wisest course of action after receiving a cancer diagnosis just as the pair was trying to figure out their new way of life.
“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 stated. “And the importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority.”
Rumors circulated around the possible causes of the couple’s breakup following the announcement of their divorce. Following his diagnosis, Turner told People he thinks the public would be forced 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 told 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.”
However, Nist expressed a different viewpoint to People, stating that Turner’s illness “wasn’t a factor” in the breakup.
“Maybe that was something he did, but I’m not sure. “But no,” she told People, “it had nothing to do with the breakup. “The distance was a contributing factor, but it wasn’t the only one. That’s about all I have to say.
Additionally, Nist stated to 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 stated. “There were only certain times that I was with him one-on-one.”
Nist told People that the upcoming wedding anniversary of the ex-couple, January 4, is “bittersweet.”
She revealed that she and Turner had planned to relocate to Charleston, South Carolina, together prior to their divorce.
“A home together was something I truly desired. “I desired the happiness of sharing a house and creating a home together,” she said to People. “I genuinely believed that would be amazing. That was something I was really anticipating.”
However, “the emails just stopped, [and] we weren’t looking anymore,” Nist told People, following some email-based house hunting that never led to a proposal.
“I wish Turner the best,” Nist told People, acknowledging that he was in a “very difficult situation.”
In a similar vein, Turner referred to their time together as 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 stated to 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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