Brooke Burke Talks About Telling Her Kids About Thyroid Cancer

It's never an easy task for a mother to tell her children she's sick.

As fitness supermodel/ TV personality Brooke Burke prepares for her thyroid cancer surgery this week, she reveals that she had to break the news to children first, including her daughter Rain, 5, and son Shaya, 4, and two kids from her previous marriage to plastic surgeon Garth Fisher, daughters Neriah, 12, and Sierra, 10, Us Magazine reports.

The "Dancing With The Stars" co-host admits that she delayed telling them for a while. "I decided not to tell my children about my diagnosis for as long as I possibly could because I didn't want them to worry," Burke-Charvet, 41, posted on her Modern Mom blog Wednesday, Dec. 5. "I know that my younger ones still don't have a great concept of time and I didn't want them to be anxious, worried and asking 1,000 questions."

Neriah and Sierra were the first to find out and had two different reactions about their mother's well-being. "[Neriah] was really scared and concerned. She cried, and her biggest fear was if I was going to be ok," Brooke wrote. Sierra was "very factual and scientific," saying, "'Ok, Mommy so you're going to get the lump removed, so that's a good thing.'" And she "left it at that and never brought my surgery up again."

But now that it's off her chest, Brooke says she is ready for her operation. "I'm not afraid anymore," she says. "I think I've been dealing with it so much the past couple months that now I'm ready to just get it done and put this behind me. My only need is being ok for my husband and my children so they don't have to go through any pain and making this as easy as possible for them."