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Bernie Madoff’s surviving son is putting on a brave face as he battles a cancer relapse — which he blames on the stress of living with the shame of his dad’s $65 billion Ponzi s🐻cheme.
With a head gone 🌳bald due to chemotherapy, Andrew Madoff said his stage-four mantle-cell lymphoma had been in remission for 10 years until he went through the trauma of his father’s scandal — when sent him to prison for life in 2009 — and his brother’s 2010 suicide.
“One way to think of this is the scandal and everything that happened killed m🧔y brother very quickly,” Andrew told People magazine. “And it’s killing me slowly.”
The Post first revealed in December that the Upper East Side resident 🌼was battling ღcancer.
A recent pi✃cture shows how the handsome 47-year-old lost his hair in his struggle with the disease. He now faces a stem-cell transplant at the end of this mont🗹h, which he and his fiancée, Catherine Hooper, hope will put the cancer back into remission.
“The transplant is a scary thing,” Andrew said. “My cousin died from the side e🎀ffects of his stem-cell transplant, so that’s ꦓon my mind.”
Despit✱e th💟e threat to his life, Andrew has zero interest in making peace with his father, who is serving a 150-year sentence.
“I will never💟 forgive him for what he did,” Andrew told People. “He’s already dead to m🎉e.”
“I feel horrible for the people whose liv🍌es have been destroyed by my f🍷ather’s crimes.”
His mo♚m, Ruth, 71, who now lives in Greenwich, Conn., told the magazine, “As any mother would know, I’m terrified [about Andrew’s cancer].”
Andrew said he was “bli♉ndsided” when he learned at an annual checkup in😼 October that the cancer had returned
“I had no symptoms. I felt fine,” he recalled.
The diagnosis came on the heels of his reconciliation with Ruth — whom Andrew and his brother, Mark, 💝had shunned ♊for initially standing by Bernie after his arrest.
Mark h💮🗹anged himself in his SoHo apartment on Dec. 11, 2010.
💛“My brother did not like to lean on his friends for support,” Andrew said. “And he s🌠uffered alone because of it.”
Although Andrew and Mark had long worked as traders in the market-making side of Bernie’sꦰ Manhattan investment company, they claimed to have no knowledge of the massive fraud.
Andrew said that he and Mark “never hesitated” to turn Bernie in🌃 after he revealed his🎃 crime to them.
“The deci▨sion was at the same ti♑me the easiest decision I ever had to make and the hardest,” he said.