Scott Hamilton has had plenty of heath issues to overcome in the past.
However, the Olympic figure skater decided to put off treatment when he was diagnosed with a third pituitary tumor in his brain in 2016.
Hamilton, who had previously faced testicular cancer and two bouts of a brain tumor, declined further treatment for now, a decision he is at peace with.
“When they gave me the diagnosis, they said, it’s back,” the 65-year-old Olympian told People exclusively. “And so they brought in this guy, a really young, talented surgeon, and he said, ‘We could do the surgery again. It’d be complicated, but we’ve got really talented people here that we could bring in, and I know we could pull it off if that’s an option for you.'”
Hamilton felt otherwise.
“All I felt was just, don’t worry about this. Just go home and get strong,” he says. “They go, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘I think I’m going to go home and get strong.'”
And so far, so good.
“It’s been remarkable,” he told People. “I went back to the scan three months later and they said, it hasn’t grown. I go back three months later and they go, it shrank 45%. I said to my surgeon, ‘Can you explain this?’ And he said, ‘God.’ I went back in, and it shrunk 25% again.”
The news, however, has not always been positive.
“It had grown,” he told People . “And then COVID hit and going into any kind of hospital situation was almost impossible. So in my spirit, in my inner being, I realized, I’m totally at peace with not even looking at it again unless I become symptomatic,” he says.
But Hamilton noted he is not ruling out treatment all together.
“The ace I have up my sleeve is that now there is a targeted radiation therapy that will shrink the tumor,” he said. “And in that, I can avoid a lot of other things like surgery and chemo.
“So I don’t know, I’m mostly trying to be in the moment and taking all the information and do the right thing when the time comes.”
Hamilton won four consecutive U.S. championships, four consecutive World Championships, and a gold medal in the 1984 Olympics