The reality star’s children are sharing updates on her progress, saying they’ve had a few wins amid the effects of cancer treatment

NEED TO KNOW

• Jeana Keough is experiencing severe radiation burns and pain following her final cancer treatments
• Her daughter Kara shared updates on her recovery, including struggles with nutrition and small victories like sipping water
• The family is asking for prayers for her healing, appetite return, and success of ongoing immunotherapy

Jeana Keough is in “wincing pain” as she struggles with radiation burns amid her ongoing treatment for tongue cancer.

The Real Housewives of Orange County alum, 70, has returned home from the hospital, having finished her final radiation treatment. However, Keough is now struggling with the painful lingering side effects of her cancer treatment, her daughter, Kara Keough Bosworth, wrote in an Aug. 5 update to the GoFundMe established by the family to help support her mother’s medical journey. 

“We were informed that these next two weeks will be the roughest on her physically – as the chemo and radiation are compounding and her body will be at its weakest point,” Kara wrote. “The radiation burns have now made it to the outer skin on her neck and even putting medicated cream on the area with the gentlest of touches causes her wincing pain.”

They are “rocking and rolling with the feeding tube and I can feed her in the dark while she sleeps at this point and she’s stopped losing weight,” Kara continued.

Kara previously explained that Jeana was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue after she noticed a painful spot on her tongue. Since then, her mother has been struggling with “becoming malnourished because the pain in her tongue and throat makes swallowing even the smallest bites or sips incredibly difficult,” Kara said. “Every day is a battle just to get enough nutrition and hydration to continue treatment.”

That’s why, Kara said in the new update, “This is a win and we’re taking it as such.”

There was “another win” after Jeana successfully took “one sip of water,” Kara said, adding that it is “a very important task so she doesn’t lose her swallow function. The pain is excruciating and she refuses narcotics so it’s unfortunately a really tough challenge to accept.”

Kara went on to ask for prayer requests because, now that chemotherapy and radiation are over, Jeana “shocks doctors with the speed of her healing,” that her “famous appetite” returns, and that “the continued immunotherapy works its magic and that cancer NEVER KNOWS THIS WOMAN AGAIN.”

She also shared her hopes that “she’s comfortable enough to speak again soon.”

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“What we thought would be a one-time surgery became a full cancer battle” after doctors discovered the cancer had spread, Jeana’s family previously wrote on the GoFundMe page.

“Everyone who knows her knows this: she’s almost impossibly optimistic in the face of terrifying things — wildfires, cancer, uncertainty,” Kara and her brother Shane wrote in a July 19 Instagram caption, alongside a photo of their mom sitting on the couch. “Yet somehow she’s always been afraid of the simplest thing: being vulnerable enough to ask for help.”

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