Nick Cannon shared the heartbreaking news on Tuesday on his daytime show, Nick Cannon, that his 5-month-old son, Zen, had died over the weekend from a rare but serious condition. “I lost my youngest son to a condition called hydrocephalus,” he said, which is a buildup of fluid that can cause pressure on the brain. In Zen’s case, this hydrocephalus was due to a malignant brain tumor, Cannon explained.
The entertainer shared how he and Zen’s mother, Alyssa Scott, learned about Zen’s condition. “I always noticed he had a cough and so I wanted to check it out,” he said. “He had this interesting breathing and by the time he was two months, I noticed he had this nice-sized head too—a Cannon head. We didn’t think anything of it. But I wanted to take him to the doctor for his sinus and breathing. We thought it would be routine.”
The doctors told Cannon his son had a buildup of fluid in his head and a malignant tumor in his brain. “Immediately we had to have surgery, it was brain surgery,” Cannon said, and the doctors placed a shunt to drain the built-up fluid. “We were faithful and hopeful for that time. We carried on, he was still just playing with his brothers and sisters, I embraced every moment,” Cannon said. On Thanksgiving, things took a turn for the worse: “The tumor began to grow a lot faster,” Cannon explained.
Cannon said he rearranged his schedule to spend as much quality time with Zen as he could. “This weekend I made a valid effort to spend the most quality time I could spend with Zen. We woke up on Sunday—I got to spend the weekend with him—and I woke up on Sunday and was like, ‘I feel like I want to go to the water.’ We got a chance to go to the ocean.”
Sadly, Zen passed away over the weekend. “I’m probably sharing one of the toughest moments of my life,” Cannon said.
Around 5,000 children are diagnosed with brain tumors every year, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. These tumors can be either benign (non-cancerous) or malignant (cancerous). Symptoms of a brain tumor in children can include headaches, seizures, nausea and vomiting, irritability, lethargy, and change in personality or mental activity. For infants whose skulls haven’t completely fused, it can also cause macroencephaly—an enlarged head—as it sounds like was the case for Cannon’s son. Brain tumors may cause other symptoms too, depending on where they’re located within the brain. If a tumor is near the brain’s optic pathways, for example, it might affect a child’s vision.
Treatment for pediatric brain tumors usually involves biopsy, and often surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible. In some cases, surgery is all that’s necessary, but others may require radiation and/or chemotherapy.
Zen was born nine days after Cannon welcomed twins Zion Mixolydian and Zillion Heir with Abby De La Rosa on June 14. Cannon is also dad to 10-year-old twins (son Moroccan and daughter Monroe) with ex-wife Mariah Carey and shares two children with Brittany Bell (4-year-old son Golden and 1-year-old daughter Powerful Queen).
Cannon had to pause several times as he held back tears over the loss of his youngest child. But he said it was important for him to be in the studio that day. “I’m here to show that I can fight through this. I’m feeling it, I’m vulnerable, I’m open. This is a special show dedicated to my beautiful son Zen.”
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