Khloe Kardashian

Khloé Kardashian Assumed the Dot on Her Face Was ‘a Zit.' It Was Cancer

In "The Kardashians," Khloé Kardashian opened up about her skin cancer surgery and what she called a "spiral into darkness"

Khloé Kardashian opened up about her battle with melanoma in the third season of "The Kardashians."

While she had already shared details with followers in October 2022 through a series of Instagram stories, "The Kardashians" depicts the events in real time.

During the premiere of "The Kardashians," Khloé Kardashian, 38, spoke to the camera about getting a biopsy for a "tiny little dot" she had on her face "for seven or eight months" she "assumed was a zit."

"Turns out it's not a zit. It's melanoma. For my age, it's incredibly rare. It's so rare that they have to go in more to see if it's spread. At this point, it does feel a little scary," she said.

Khloé Kardashian said on The Kelly Clarkson Show in November she had two biopsies to confirm she did, indeed, have a tumor that needed to be removed.

At Kendall Jenner’s 818 party in the "The Kardashians" Season Three premiere, Kris Jenner discussed Khloé Kardashian's condition with Kylie Jenner, saying the tumor was "cancerous."

“Khloé has a little bit of a history with melanoma and cancerous lesions, so this on her face is very concerning to me,” Kris Jenner told Kylie Jenner.

On The Kelly Clarkson Show, Khloé Kardashian said that she had surgery to remove melanoma on her back at 19.

Kris Jenner went on to talk about the surgery Khloé Kardashian would need to have the tumor removed, which made her "very worried."

"You don't know how much of your cheek they're going to take," Kris Jenner said.

Khloé Kardashian also discussed the procedure with Kylie Jenner in the first episode. "They said they won't know until they open up my cheek, how big they have to cut," she said. "But in my face, it's going to be annoying. I just don't want a big scar on my face."

She continued, “When it rains it pours. What are you going to do? I like this side of my face better anyway."

The second episode shows Khloé Kardashian recovering from the surgery, which also determined whether the melanoma had spread.

After undergoing the surgery, Khloé Kardashian appeared on camera wearing a bandage on her face. Her speech was impaired due to stitches on the inside of her mouth.

"They had to sort of, open up my cheek," she told the camera in a confessional interview. "I woke up and I had this huge bandage on my face and I couldn’t move my mouth. I had stitches on the inside of my mouth. This was way more serious than I either understood or anticipated it to be.”

In the episode, she told her friend Malika Haqq what happened while she was on the operating table. "When they were reviewing the labs, a lot more than they thought had to be removed,” she said.

"So what they just don't know is if it's pre-cancerous or if it already went to cancer. And melanoma is deadly," she continued.

By that point in the episode, Khloé Kardashian was awaiting results, which would determine whether she had to do a "second round" of surgery. The news prompted her friend to cry.

Khloé Kardashian consoled her friend by saying, "I'm fine. When you have kids, you can't not be OK." But she went on to express her anxiety to the camera.

"I'm definitely anxious about everything and now you just have to wait. When you're waiting on results, that's when your mind can go to different places. You start thinking, 'What if I do have cancer? What if the cancer spread?' You start thinking these crazy things. I just had a baby. You just spiral into darkness," she said.

Later on, Khloé Kardashian said the entire tumor was successfully removed and her "margins are clear." The doctors, though, told her the cancer "could have spread at any moment."

"I'm relieved and so happy. All I have is a scar that I will figure out later. I feel fortunate and blessed," she said.

She told her mom the feeling of knowing "everything is gone" was "a relief."

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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