Mama June's Daughter, Anna 'Chickadee' Cardwell, Reveals She's Losing Hair After Stage 4 Cancer Diagnosis
Anna "Chickadee" Cardwell is currently battling Stage 4 cancer and is already dealing with the side effects of treatment. The 28-year-old shared before-and-after photos of her hair with TMZ, showing clumps have begun to fall out. The media outlet was also the first to report the news of Cardwell's diagnosis. Chickadee has stage 4 adrenal carcinoma and is undergoing chemotherapy treatment. According to the National Cancer Insitute, adrenocortical carcinoma is a rare disease in which malignant (cancer) cells form in the outer layer of the adrenal gland. Having certain genetic conditions increases the risk of adrenocortical carcinoma. Symptoms of the disease include pain in the abdomen.
Chickadee was relatively silent about her battle, but her younger sister Alana "Honey Boo Boo" Thompson has been vulnerable about watching her big sister as she toughens it out. "This is what I mean when I say you never truly know what somebody is going through at home. No matter how famous they are," the 17-year-old wrote via her Instagram Story. "I'm very famous, but normal s— happens to me and my family [and] y'all need to realize that ASAP."
The family's popularity grew courtesy of Honey Boo Boo and her mother, Mama June Shannon, appeared on Toddlers & Tiaras in 2009. They then landed their own spinoff series, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
Chickadee is also a mother, with two daughters Kaitlyn and Kylee with ex-husband Michael Cardwell. The former couple separated in 2017 after dealing with Kaitlyn's medical challenge. At the time, the then 4-year-old went under the knife one year earlier to remove the extra thumb that she had since birth.
"The doctor told me that she did very, very well," Chickadee exclusively told Us Weekly in November 2016 of the procedure. "[At first] she was like, 'No, Mommy, I'm going to miss my little finger. I said, 'When you get older, people might pick on you. You don't know that.' She was like, 'Well then, Ma, you can get on to them and go back and pick at them.'"