Caitlyn Jenner's Cancer Journey

Former athlete and transgender public figure Caitlyn Jenner was diagnosed with cancer twice, first in 2013 and later in 2018. In both cases, her diagnosis was skin cancer. Here’s what we know about Caitlyn Jenner’s cancer journey more than a decade following her initial announcement.

Jenner announced her first skin cancer diagnosis in 2013, and subsequently underwent surgery to remove a cancerous growth on her nose, a procedure that reportedly required 30 stitches.

In March 2018, at the age of 68, Jenner shared a post on social media announcing that she had recently had to get “sun damage removed from [her] nose.” Though her social media post did not mention whether the damage was cancer, PEOPLE Magazine later confirmed that the activist had a basal cell carcinoma removed from her nose.

Basal cell carcinoma is a kind of skin cancer that begins in basal skin cells and most commonly occurs due to excessive sun exposure. Regular use of sunscreen is vital for the prevention of basal cell carcinoma and other kinds of skin cancer.

In her social media announcement, Jenner also stressed the importance of wearing sunscreen as a preventive measure against skin cancer: “PSA—always wear your sunblock.”

Jenner is a retired Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete. She won her first men’s decathlon in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, a feat that earned her recognition as an ‘all-American hero.’ She subsequently built a career in television, film, and business, among other fields, becoming especially popular because of her appearance on the show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which ran from 2007 to 2021.

In 2015, Jenner made a public announcement sharing her transgender identity and her new name, following which she starred in the television series, I Am Cait. The series aimed to allow viewers to take an intimate look into Jenner’s gender transition as she sought out her “new normal.”

Despite her prominence as one of the most well-known transgender women in the world, Jenner has been a polarizing figure within the LGBTQ+ community due to her association with conservative politics and her opposition to transgender women competing in women’s sports. She has long been a member of the Republican Party; in 2021, she represented the party in her run for the California gubernatorial recall election. Following the election, she was hired as an on-air contributor for Fox News, an American news channel known to appeal to a highly conservative audience. The channel has been widely criticized for knowingly endorsing false conspiracy theories to promote Republican causes, including the now-disproven claims regarding fraudulent Dominion voting machines during the 2020 presidential elections, climate change denial, and COVID-19 misinformation.