You might think David Bromstad is dying if you spent any time on Facebook this spring. Hundreds of well-meaning strangers shared their own cancer stories in response to posts claiming the HGTV designer was diagnosed with stage four glioblastoma. According to a different account, he was sent to Cedars-Sinai because pancreatic cancer had spread to his liver. Both tales were made up. There was not a trace of sourcing behind either. However, they continued to circulate, reappearing every few weeks like an unstoppable tide.
The hoax pages adhere to a well-known formula: a depressing headline, a Photoshopped image, and an abundance of links beneath. The claims have been repeatedly refuted by fact-checkers, and Bromstad has kept up his regular posting schedule throughout. The effectiveness of these phony death-watches, which capitalize on viewers’ love for a man who has spent ten years touring waterfront bungalows with lottery winners, is unsettling. Although celebrity death hoaxes are nothing new, it is especially cruel to fabricate a terminal illness for someone who has just survived a real-life event.
Because it’s hard enough to tell the real story in his own words. Bromstad checked himself into a trauma-based treatment program in the middle of filming his December 2025 special My Lottery Dream Home: David’s Happy Ending. His dream home in Florida, a construction reminiscent of a fairy tale that he candidly described as an effort to heal his early years, had to be completely demolished due to mold growth and flooding. He started abusing drugs as a coping mechanism after witnessing the project fail. He put it bluntly: “I was literally screaming out for help.”
As it happened, the house was more than just a house. In the 1980s, Bromstad was bullied and shunned as a gay child growing up in rural Minnesota. He concealed his depression under an idealized childhood fantasy, which he later described as a defense mechanism that saved him. Then the fantasy flooded, reconstructed with paint and wood. He said in the special, “Now my house, my childhood fantasy, is broken, like me.” It’s difficult to ignore how infrequently an honest sentence appears on a home renovation show.
According to his account, he has recovered. Speaking about his nearly three-year sobriety, Bromstad attributes his understanding of how and why he fell into the hole to therapy. He celebrated his fiftieth birthday by hiking in Norway, researching his lineage, and writing about coming to terms with his imperfections. He noticeably skips the champagne when his house-hunting clients toast on camera, as some Reddit users have pointed out with some warmth. That kind of small detail often conveys more information than press releases.
It is genuinely unclear if he will resume full-time on-air design work; he has indicated that he might withdraw from that aspect of the company in order to preserve the stability he fought for. There’s a feeling that viewers would overlook him in any case. Because the engagement economy encourages it, the rumor mill will continue to fabricate diagnoses. Meanwhile, the real David Bromstad seems to be improving—something the hoaxes never anticipated.
