Demi Jones has revealed online trolls have accused her of lying about her cancer diagnosis.
Last week, the Love Island star revealed she’s been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, after she underwent surgery last month to remove a lump on her neck.
The 22-year-old appeared on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday morning, where she spoke to hosts Susanna Reid and Bill Turnbull about her diagnosis.
“It’s been a hard thing to process but I’m OK, that’s the main thing. Apparently thyroid cancer is really slow growing,” she explained.
“My doctor reckons that I’ve had this for years and years and had no idea. I’ve had this lump since 2019 since I noticed it but hadn’t come out. So it’s probably been underlying for years and years.”
Opening up about the online reaction to her diagnosis, Demi said: “I’m really lucky in that I haven’t experienced a lot of trolling. I’ve been really lucky coming out of the villa. But there is still people like that…”
“Even with my cancer, there were still nasty comments and things like that. Saying, ‘Oh, she’s lying, she’s that’. And I just woke up and looked at Instagram and thought, ‘That’s ridiculous.'”
“Unfortunately there are people out there like that. I never respond to anything. I never respond to trolling on social media, it’s not worth my time. I’m really strong about it anyway. I’ve always been like that.
“But it makes me sad – I’m not lying about this at all. It’s a really serious thing – I don’t want to be going through this.”
'Even with my cancer, I've had nasty comments.'@Demi_Jones1 says that while she has had lots of supportive messages on her social media, she has also received some unkind messages.
She agrees that more needs to be done to stop online trolling. pic.twitter.com/1r91ggaMKu
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) May 25, 2021
The reality star added that she’s had the “most amazing amount of support” since sharing the news.
“I had more messages when I had my surgery than when I came out of the villa. So many young girls have been messaging me saying they’ve booked appointments and they’ve chased up appointments because of me as well.”
“So I thought, if I could just save one person’s life or get young girls to check for lumps, regardless of your age, then that’s just amazing to me.”
Demi is best known for appearing on the winter version of Love Island in 2020, which was filmed in South Africa.
