In a heart-stopping announcement that shocked her fans, CNN morning anchor Sara Sidner revealed on live TV that she’s gearing up for a life-saving double mastectomy after her fierce five-month battle with stage 3 breast cancer hit a snag. Despite the grueling rounds of chemotherapy, Sidner’s fight isn’t over.
“After five months of chemo, I have not yet become cancer-free. The next phase is a double mastectomy,” she bravely disclosed, her voice echoing the weight of her decision, according to People Magazine. Betting on a brighter future, Sidner is clinging to promising stats: “A 2016 study found that the 10 year survival rate for a bilateral mastectomy is 90.3%,” she revealed with a hopeful glint. “I like those odds, so I am going under the knife tomorrow and will be out recovering for a few weeks.”
No clear return date is set for the seasoned journalist, who has been a cornerstone at CNN for nearly 17 years. “What I have learned so far in my cancer journey is treating it is more a marathon than a sprint,” she added. Meanwhile, Kate Bolduan and John Berman are stepping up to fill her formidable shoes.
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Earlier this year, Sidner got real about the mental toll of her diagnosis, from battling despair to harnessing an ironclad will to live. “I just made a decision. I’m like, ‘No, you’re going to live and you’re going to stop this and you’re going to do every single thing in your arsenal to survive this. Period.’ And I have been so much happier in my life since … I mean happier than I was before cancer,” she told People Magazine.
Despite the physical toll—admitting to fatigue and a slower pace—Sidner hasn’t put life on pause, maintaining her public presence, albeit quietly. “I am fatigued and I am slower, and I have to be more thoughtful about how I take care of myself,” she said in January. Sharing her own story, she added, is her way of showing viewers that a cancer diagnosis is “not the end of your world.”
“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,” she says, referencing a statistic that one in eight women develop breast cancer in their lifetimes. “To all my sisters, Black, White, and Brown: Please, for the love of God, do your checks yourself. … Don’t play with this, just please try to catch it before I did.”
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