Elle Macpherson reveals secret breast cancer battle, explains why she refused chemotherapy

She recalled, “It was unexpected, it was confusing, it was daunting in so many ways. And it really gave me an opportunity to dig deep in my inner sense to find a solution that worked for me.

“I realized I was going to need my own truth, my belief system to support me through it,” Macpherson, who once made headlines for promoting an anti-vaccine campaign, continued. “And that’s what I did.”

Despite doctors advising the “Sports Illustrated Swimsuit” star to undergo a mastectomy, chemotherapy, hormone therapy and breast reconstruction surgery, she fought cancer with traditional medicine instead.

“It was a wonderful exercise in being true to myself, trusting myself and trusting the nature of my and the course of action that I had chosen,” she said.

In an excerpt from her memoir, “Elle,” Macpherson described her sons’ mixed reactions to her holistic methods.

“Cy simply thought that chemo kills you,” she wrote of her and ex-boyfriend Arpad Busson’s 21-year-old. “And so he never wanted me to do it because he thought that was a kiss of death.”

As for “more conventional” Flynn, 26, he “wasn’t comfortable with [his mom’s] choice at all.”

Busson, 61, also “didn’t agree” with Macpherson but praised her “courage.”

She added, “Sometimes an authentic choice from the heart makes no sense to others … but it doesn’t have to. People thought I was crazy but I knew I had to make a choice that truly resonated with
me.”

She called her rejection of “standard medical solutions … the hardest thing [she’s] ever done.”

However, Macpherson noted, “Saying no to my own inner sense would have been even harder. … To me, that meant addressing emotional as well as physical factors ᴀssociated with breast cancer. It
was time for deep, inner reflection. And that took courage.”

The actress said that she is now “in utter wellness,” clarifying, “In traditional terms, they’d say I’m in clinical remission.”