The 29-year-old reality star, who’s had asthma since she was 5, shares her lifelong struggles with the chronic diseasewas in midair on a flight to visit her fiancé’s Okla homa family in December 2022 when she was suddenly overcome by a coughing fit. “I could feel my throat closing up, like there were hair balls stuck in it,” recalls the 29-year-old star of the 2019 season of“I was shaking uncontrollably and trying to grab my inhaler — but I couldn’t take in the air.
Brown grew up in Northport, Ala., near the football-crazed campus of the University of Alabama, where her parents, Robert, 63, a barber by trade, and Susanne, 55, own and operate two cosmetology schools. Brown started dancing when she was 2 and loved playing sports , but she was also prone to illness as a child.
The procedure revealed an encased, malignant tumor on her pancreas, which doctors successfully removed in surgery. “They found it before it could fully attack the rest of my system,” says Brown, who went for regular checkups for several years after and remains cancer-free. “I got very sick with that, but I also got very lucky.”
“I was pretty clueless — I couldn’t have told you how a rose ceremony went, so it was kind of a joke to me,” she admits. broke up after it was discovered that Wyatt was already in a relationship.) “It was the wildest ride of my life,” says Brown, who hopscotched from her final rose ceremony over to“It all changed my life, but that comes with highs and lows, for sure,” says Brown, who admits that her run on reality TV also took a toll on her mental health.