CNN Anchor Sara Sidner Shared Her Stage 3 Breast Cancer Diagnosis On-Air

This week, CNN news anchor Sara Sidner revealed on-air that she has been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. The 51-year-old senior national correspondent shared the news of her diagnosis with viewers before urging women to stay up-to-date with their yearly mammogram exams.

“Just take a second to recall the names of eight women who you love and know in your life. Just count them on your fingers,” Sara said during the segment. “Statistically, one of them will get or have breast cancer. I am that one of eight in my friend group.”

She explained that her diagnosis came as a surprise because she’d always considered herself to be really healthy. “I have never been sick a day in my life. I don’t smoke, I rarely drink, breast cancer does not run in my family, and yet here I am with stage three breast cancer,” Sara said as she choked up. “It’s hard to say out loud.”

In October, Sara got the news that her mammogram had raised flags right as she was leaving the country to cover the Israel-Hamas War. She had to wait three weeks for her biopsy results, People reported. After returning from the war zone, the biopsy confirmed that she had stage 3 breast cancer. Initially, Sara jumped to the “worst-case scenario,” per People, but after a few days of processing, she realized she wasn’t going to give up.

Sara has already in her second month of chemotherapy treatments, and will get radiation and a double mastectomy, per People. And despite the chemo, she hasn’t missed a day of work since the diagnosis. “I am fatigued and I am slower, and I have to be more thoughtful about how I take care of myself,” she shared.

With stage 3 breast cancer (also called locally advanced breast cancer), the cancer cells are present in lymph nodes, but are not found in other areas of the body yet, per the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Stage 3 diagnoses can be categorized into three groups: Stage 3A, Stage 3B, and Stage 3C. The difference between each stage depends on the size of the tumor and how it has spread to the lymph nodes and surrounding tissue, the foundation says.

Stage 3 breast cancer has a 66 to 98 percent five-year survival rate. Symptoms can include changes to the skin of the breast, a lump or swelling in the breast or armpit, nipple changes, pain, irritation, itchiness, breasts that are warm to the touch, red, or swollen, and changes in your breast’s size and shape, according to the Susan G. Komen website.

Each year, an estimated that 240,000 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with breast cancer. During her announcement, Sara explained that Black women are 41 percent more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than their white counterparts. In fact, breast cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the country for Black and Hispanic women, per Breastcancer.org

“Mentally, it has been 90 percent good for me because it’s just opened my eyes to how beautiful this life that we have is,” Sara told People. “I love my life now more than I can remember since probably 7 or 8. I really, truly feel grateful just to be here.”

With this newfound strength, Sara hopes to demonstrate for others going through the same thing that “it’s not the end of your world.”

“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,” she said.

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