TV star John Blackman reflects on extreme jaw surgery that saved his face

Beloved Aussie TV personality John Blackman is remaining positive amid his ongoing battle with cancer. 

In a new interview on the You Cannot Serious podcast, the former Hey Hey It's Saturday star said he considers himself "lucky" despite the extreme surgeries he has endured since being diagnosed in 2018 with a rare form of skin cancer, known as basal-cell carcinoma. 

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It had formed on his chin from what he thought was "just a little pimple", but the cancer spread and his jaw needed to be removed and reconstructed using his leg bone in a harrowing 12-hour operation.  

Blackman opened up further about the surgery in the new podcast, telling hosts Sam Newman and Don Scott the cancer spread so much, doctors feared it would "eat away" his face.

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"They said it was really aggressive and it was about to eat away the rest of my face and eventually get to my brain and I'd be brown bread," Blackman said on the episode. 

"Another aggressive SCC [squamous cell carcinoma] started growing in a crater that was created when they removed one minor one and it was heading towards my brain. There's the skin, then there's the scalp, then there's your brain. What this was doing was very aggressive and it was starting to go through what's left of my meniscus."

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However, his constant setback in his fight against cancer has not dampened his spirits, with Blackman taking it all in his stride and still feeling like the "luckiest person on earth".

"Adversity, doesn't matter how important or smart you think you are, everyone has some sort of adversity in their life," he said.

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