Nick Cannon’s personal experiences with chemotherapy helped him make a very difficult decision.
Cannon’s 5-month-old son Zen died in December 2021 of brain cancer. The comedian and TV personality shared in an episode of “The Checkup with Dr. David Agus” on Paramount+ that he and Zen’s mother, model Alyssa Scott, have decided to forego chemotherapy treatments for their child.
Cannon told Angus that he asked the doctors if chemotherapy would prolong Zen’s life or lessen his suffering. Zen, who started showing symptoms at 2 months, has already undergone several procedures.
Zen’s doctors said it wouldn’t be much help because of the size and location of the boy’s tumor, which was near the center of his brain, Cannon said.
Cannon, who underwent a form of chemotherapy when she was diagnosed with lupus in 2012, couldn’t help but wonder how the treatment would affect a child.
“I knew what that process was like, as a grown man: My hair is falling out,” he said on the show. “I wouldn’t even call it pain, it felt like it was all consuming you.”
“I couldn’t imagine him in a newborn and what he would do,” Cannon continued.
He also explained that opting for the treatment also means that Zen will “live in the hospital”.
“He could never go home,” Cannon said. “I said, ‘We don’t have much time with him. I want him to be able to see the beach.
Eventually, parents “got into the space of ‘well, we want to enjoy him and we want him to be able to have fun,'” Cannon said.
Cannon explained on the “Nick Cannon Show” last year that he was surprised when his son was first diagnosed and considered taking Zen to the doctor for a regular cough check.
“I’ve always noticed him coughing, so I wanted to check it out,” Cannon said last year. “He had this interesting breath and when he was 2 months old, I noticed that he also had a nice-sized head: a cannon head. We didn’t think about that. But I wanted to take him to the doctor for sinus and breathing. We thought it would be routine.”
That’s when doctors discovered that Zen had fluid on his head and a malignant tumor.
Cannon described Zen on his show as “the most loving.”
“We called it Z Chilling,” he said last year. “He was always smiling. He had the most beautiful spirit.”
