singer Nicole
Singer reveals breast cancer
At the age of 17, Nicole won the Eurovision Song Contest 1982 with “A Little Peace”.
© imago/Future Image
Singer Nicole was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2020. In an interview, she talks about the course of the disease.
Singer Nicole (57, “A Little Peace”) has revealed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2020. It was “a shock” like her in an interview with the “Bild” newspaper explained. “Time stopped. My life ran in slow motion like a movie inside me. I just thought: ‘Not me!'” The singer has already had surgery, and chemotherapy followed by radiation began the following January.
She lost her long hair, which she had worn all her life and was her “trademark”, says the 57-year-old about the side effects of the therapy. “Suddenly I was bald. That was hard.” From then on she wore a wig. Eyelashes and eyebrows were also “completely gone”, “the mucous membranes in my mouth were inflamed and my nails were falling apart.”
Nicole: “I didn’t want pity”
In an Instagram post the musician and ESC winner from 1982 also reports on her experiences in recent months. “In December 2020 I suddenly and unexpectedly had to go on a trip that I certainly hadn’t booked,” she writes about a picture of herself with short hair. It was unmistakably clear to her that “the path I had to take would be extremely rocky and difficult. Nevertheless, I had to pack my backpack and start this journey, because there was no alternative”. A “long, dark valley” opened up before her. “I had to go through that, because only at the end of the valley was the sun waiting for me over the mountain peak.”
The few who knew about her illness kept it to themselves at her request, since she didn’t want to feel sorry for her. The fact that the public was not involved gave her the necessary time and peace “that I needed to reach my goal with determination.” After 16 months of fears and doubts, hope and confidence, she is now “finally standing at the summit cross. The sun hugs me again, its warmth now dries all tears, even the ones I haven’t cried, and I say quietly, but firmly and infinitely proud to myself: ‘ Girl, you did it!'”