Jill Farnham opens up on John's health battle
John Farnham's wife Jill has opened up about her husband's devastating cancer battle, and how his health journey took a toll on their entire family.
Jill, who has been notoriously private throughout her marriage to the Aussie music legend, has penned two chapters in Farnham's memoir The Voice Inside, sharing how John's cancer diagnosis changed everything, and shared her opinions on his future singing.
“I don’t know if John will sing again,” she wrote. “It just depends. Because of the radiation, that whole side of his face is rock hard. The flesh, the muscle, the tendons, none of it is supple."
“The surgeons need to work out how to loosen it all, so we have to be patient. He’s disappointed, naturally, because he may not be up on a stage again and he loved that.”
Jill also revealed it was her who pushed Farnham to see a doctor before his diagnosis with cancer in August 2022, explaining, “He had a big white mass on the inside of his cheek and you could physically see it.”
“For several months I was saying to him, ‘Let’s go see about that thing in your mouth,’ and he’d say, ‘No, it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright.’ He kept putting it off and putting it off. I pleaded with him to go see a doctor and finally he did.”
Jill explained how her husband's attitude as "a classic Cancerian” impacted the time it took to get a diagnosis, and how she has had to be strong for her whole family through the scary health ordeal.
“Over the years I’ve had to be strong,” Jill wrote. “I’ve had to be a wife, a mother, a psychiatrist, a doctor, I’ve had to be all those things in one. I’ve had to be strong and bossy to keep the family together, to keep moving forward, and I have done that because I love John and I love my family."
“John is a classic Cancerian, he likes to walk sideways and go around everything, rather than face any issues head-on,” Jill continued. “To this day he acts like that when he’s faced with a tough decision or situation. He always beats around the bush rather than deal with it and then, of course, that just makes a situation worse for him.”
Later in the chapter detailing Farnham’s health, Jill set the record straight on some media reports relating to the surgery to remove the cancerous tumour.
“And, just for the record, they didn’t take his jaw,” she wrote. “I know lots of people think that’s what happened, but in the end they removed the cancer from his cheek and they also scraped his jaw to make sure it hadn’t gotten into his bones."
“Thankfully the cancer wasn’t in his bones, which was great news, and so he’s still got his bottom jaw, even though the radiation has messed that up a little bit."
“In hospital they were feeding him through a tube in his stomach, which was pretty grim. I started taking in my home cooking. Things I knew John would like. He would eat a couple of mouthfuls and that would be it, he wouldn’t be able to manage any more. For a while there, it felt like one thing on top of another for John."
“It was a traumatic time for all of us, but we got through it. Now he’s back to eating, which is a good sign, but he can’t open his mouth very far, so it’s hard.”
Image credits: Nine