In an emotional speech, CNN news anchor Sara Sidner announced Monday that she had stage 3 breast cancer, pleading with women, “for the love of God,” to get a mammogram every year.
“I have never been sick a day in my life,” she said with a trembling voice. I do not smoke. I rarely drink. Breast cancer does not run in my family. And yet, here I am with stage 3 breast cancer. It’s hard to say it out loud.”
The 51-year-old woman, who is in her second month of chemotherapy, adds that she will begin radiation shortly. She will also undergo a double mastectomy, the complete removal of both breasts.
Although stage 3 breast cancer is no longer a death sentence, the host said she was shocked to learn that black women are 41% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women, according to the American Cancer Society.
“So to all my sisters, black, white and brown, please, for the love of God, get your mammograms every year, do your self-exams. Try to detect it before me,” begs the woman who has not missed a single day of work since the start of her treatments.
In love with his life
Later, Sara Sidner goes so far as to thank cancer for choosing her, because she is learning that no matter the trials of life, she is still in love with this life.
“Just being alive feels really different now. I’m happier, because I no longer worry about little details that used to bother me. Now, every day that I breathe, I can celebrate being still here with you, with my co-anchors, my colleagues, my family, and I can love and cry and laugh and hope, and that, my dear friends, is “It’s a lot,” she concludes, with tears in her eyes.
In an exclusive interview with the magazine PeopleSidner confided that his illness “opened his eyes to the beauty of our lives”.
“I love my life now more than I can remember. I’m really, really grateful to be here,” said the one who covered the war between Israel and Hamas on the ground last October, when she received the results of her mammograms.
“Seeing all the suffering that was happening where I was and seeing people still coping with grace through the worst thing that ever happened to them, I was blown away by their resilience,” the journalist tells the magazine. In a strange way, it helped me gain perspective on what lay ahead.”
