CNN anchor Sara Sidner announces live on TV she is battling stage 3 breast cancer
Sara Sidner has announced live on TV she’s been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.
The CNN anchor, 51, also used her poignant broadcast to reveal she is already is in her second month of chemotherapy and to urge people to get checked for the disease.
She said on the Monday (08.01.24) edition of ‘CNN News Central’, which she co-hosts about the shock of getting her diagnosis as she has always been healthy and clean-living: “I have never been sick a day of my life. I don’t smoke, I rarely drink.”
Sara added: “Breast cancer does not run in my family, and yet, here I am with stage 3 breast cancer. It is hard to say out loud.”
The presenter will be undergoing radiation treatment and a double mastectomy, and insisted she was maintaining a positive outlook.
She told viewers that breast cancer “is not a death sentence anymore for most women”.
Reminding women to get breast cancer checks every year, Sara added: “So to all my sisters, black and white and brown out there, please, for the love of God, get your mammograms every single year.
“Do your self-exams – try to catch it before I did.”
Sara added she is grateful for cancer “choosing me” because it caused her to shift her perspective on life – saying: “I’m learning that no matter what hell we go through in life that I am still madly in love with this life, and just being alive feels really different for me now.”
Sara has also told People magazine her treatment has impacted her everyday life, saying: “I am fatigued and I am slower, and I have to be more thoughtful about how I take care of myself.”
She added about suffering hair loss due to her treatment: “The bald truth is my hair’s coming out. If I’m having a bad hair day, I know about it. If I’m having a good hair day, I also know about that.”
The CNN anchor has tried cold capping – a method to reduce hair loss by wearing freezing-cold hats – but the hair loss is still noticeable.
She said: “I don’t put my personal stuff out there that often, but I can do something for someone because I have cancer. I can warn somebody.
Sara added she is still “loving living” because life “can be short”, and said: “I don’t know how this is going to end, (but) we have the ability to feel joy at any point as long as we’re breathing.”
