Terry Bradshaw kept cancer diagnosis secret to avoid ‘pity’

Terry Bradshaw could handle cancer, but pity was unthinkable.

The former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback and four-time Super Bowl winner, 74, told the “Today” show Wednesday that he feared people feeling sorry for him if they knew he’d been diagnosed with cancer a second time in less than a year.

“I didn’t talk about it because I didn’t want pity,” said Bradshaw. “I think the perception around America with all the millions of people is, ‘Oh, look at him. Bless his heart. He has cancer. Well my husband died of cancer. My kids or —’ I didn’t want that. It took me a long time before I told my family.”

In September, the “Fox NFL Sunday” co-host revealed on the show — on which he’d earlier found himself breathless while reenacting plays from some games — that he had been diagnosed early with bladder cancer and, subsequently, the rare and aggressive skin cancer known as a Merkel cell tumor. Though he’s recovered from the former, of which he “never was scared,” the latter did concern him.

“Listen, cancer shows no favoritism,” said Bradshaw. “As a man of faith, as a Christian, my attitude was, ‘Well, if I go, I’m OK. If I stay, I’m OK.’”

While he “may have 25, 30 years left,” Bradshaw said, he added that he’s going to live life as if he’s “got one.”

“We’re gonna go to Europe. We’re gonna go to Paris. Gonna go to wherever we wanna go,” he said alongside wife Tammy. “I’m gonna get all this in because I feel like I don’t want to put this off anymore.”