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Hilversum
Dieuwertje Blok resigns her work and disappears from public view for the time being, because her nose has to be amputated. She has nose cancer. This is what 66-year-old Blok, best known for presenting Het Sinterklaasjournaal, said in the Volkskrant. A previous attempt to combat cancer cells in her nose was unsuccessful.
“I find it very strange to seek publicity myself,” says Blok about the interview. “But I want to be in control. At some point I will have to go outside again and then I like the idea that people know what it is and how I feel about it. Because what needs to be done is very rigorous.” According to Blok, it will take “some time” before she gets a prosthesis. “So then it’s better if everyone knows what’s going on with me.”
Blok’s nose has been irradiated “from very close” and the presenter has also tried immunotherapy. Both treatments did not work. “It already didn’t feel good,” she says. “It also smells a bit in my nose.” When Blok was told that a nasal amputation was necessary, it was “a big shock” for her.
“My first reaction was: If that has to be done, then I don’t actually know whether I want to live anymore,” says Blok. She now looks at it differently. “Now I think: Go, get rid of that cancer. It was my nose or my life. And then there was no longer a moment when I wanted to choose my own nose.”
At NTR, the door to Het Sinterklaasjournaal remains “wide open” for Blok, says a spokeswoman for the broadcaster. “We hope and assume that she will return. We now think first and only about her recovery, because Dieuwertje’s health is of course the most important thing.” The NTR calls the situation in which Blok has ended up “a very nasty, difficult and almost unimaginable one.”
Blok will be replaced by Maartje Stokkers on the radio program Podium in the near future, NTR reports.
