"I daydreamed about, wished for and pined away for a chance to get to tell you this news."
Danielle Spencer’s mom is breaking her silence one day after the former child star’s death.
Spencer, best known for playing Dee from “What’s Happening!!” before becoming a veterinarian, died in Virginia on Aug. 11 after a “years-long battle with cancer," per the Associated Press. She was 60.
Her former co-star and longtime friend Haywood Nelson was first to report the death.
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“Dr. Dee, our brilliant, loving, positive, pragmatic warrior, without fail, has finally found her release from the clutches of this world and a body,” Nelson wrote in an Instagram post on Aug. 12.
“We celebrate Danielle Spencer and her contributions as we regret to inform her departure and transition from a long battle with cancer,” he added.
According to a new report by TMZ, published Aug. 13, Spencer spent her final moments in a hospital bed.
The actress-turned-doctor’s mom, Cheryl Pelt, told the outlet that Spencer was hospitalized on Aug. 1 “after a urinary tract infection turned septic.”
Pelt went on to add that she had tubes hooked up to her nose because she was unable to eat hard foods and struggled to take her medicine.
Spencer was also diagnosed with pneumonia in both lungs and was “losing weight” as her gastric cancer grew worse, per TMZ.
Pelt further confirmed that her daughter was talking and alert when she was visited by family on Aug. 10.
She later suffered a “code blue,” which usually means “someone has gone into cardiac or respiratory arrest,” according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Pelt clarified that her daughter’s cause of death was gastric cancer and cardiac arrest, according to TMZ.
The former child star’s brother Jeremy, a jazz musician, also weighed in on his sister’s death.
“Danielle had a tremendous amount of love and care for those she loved — her nieces and nephews — and she remained positive in her darkest moments,” her brother told TMZ.
Danielle Spencer’s dream after acting was to be a veterinarian
According to NBC News, Spencer was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014 and had emergency surgery for a brain bleed four years later.
She also struggled with long-term health complications that stemmed from a car accident that killed her stepfather and left her in a three-week coma in 1976, per People.
“I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to my stepfather, Daddy Tim, whom I loved and who taught me show business as a young child in New York,” she wrote in a 2010 memoir, per The Hollywood Reporter.
Spencer’s character Dee from “What’s Happening!!” was known for her sassy attitude. Her famous catchphrase was, “Ooh, I'm gonna tell Mama!”
She later reprised her role in the show’s sequel, “What’s Happening Now!!”, which aired from 1985 to 1988, per IMDB.
Though best known for her acting career, Spencer’s mom told TMZ that becoming a veterinarian was “always her dream.”
She pursued a degree in medicine at the University of California, Davis and later attended Tuskegee University Veterinary School before fulfilling her dream in 1996, per NBC News.
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Spencer was a practicing veterinarian for nearly two decades leading up to her death.
