Jenna Fischer Discusses Breast Cancer Diagnosis In 1st Interview: EXCLUSIVE

Jenna Fischer Discusses Breast Cancer Diagnosis In 1st Interview: EXCLUSIVE

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Just over a week after Jenna Fischer publicly revealed her breast cancer diagnosis, the former “The Office” actor is opening up about her journey, treatment and how her mindset has shifted.

On Oct. 8, Fischer, 50, shared an Instagram post in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, revealing she had been diagnosed with Stage 1 triple-positive breast cancer in December 2023. She wrote that after undergoing surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, she’s now cancer free.

In a one-on-one conversation with TODAY’s Hoda Kotb, which aired on Oct. 21, Fischer said she hoped sharing her story will bring comfort and hope to another woman receiving a breast cancer diagnosis.

The diagnosis

The actor told Hoda that in October 2023, she went in for her routine mammogram appointment that she had been putting off.

“Three weeks later, they said, ‘Oh, your mammogram was fine. There were a few spots that were difficult to see. You have very dense tissue. We would recommend that you do another mammogram and maybe follow up with a breast ultrasound,’” she said of the conversation with her doctor.

“I was like, ‘This is the appointment that won’t end,’” Fischer added, laughing.

She explained that she felt “no level of concern” when she went back for her breast ultrasound. However, they then asked her to do a biopsy, saying it likely was a “10% chance it’s cancerous.”

Fischer said she was on a hike by herself when she received the results via her patient portal.

“I checked the portal on the hike, and that’s when I saw words like ‘invasive,’ ‘ductal,’ ‘carcinoma,’ ‘malignant,’” she said. “And I was like, ‘Those words sound like cancer words.’”

She then called her husband, Lee Kirk, to tell him the results, though she wasn’t sure it was cancer until her doctor confirmed it later that same day.

When her doctor told her of her diagnosis, Fischer said she just felt “disbelief.”

“I think the word that really got me was when we found out that I was triple-positive and my oncologist said chemotherapy. That was when I really lost it,” she said.

Treatment

Fischer opened up to Hoda about the reality of losing her hair during chemotherapy, which she said was one of the side effects she was most concerned about.

“I started by having just a big bald patch down this side of my head. And I would kind of do a real elaborate comb-over,” she said, laughing. “I was like, ‘Oh, I understand why the gentlemen do this now. Yes, I can sort of pretend like that isn’t there for a while.’”

Although Fischer said she considered it, she never had a “big shave-your-head moment.” Aside from styling her new part, she said she also opted to wear more hats and wigs during treatment.

Leaning on her support system

When it came to sharing the news with friends and family, the “Hall Pass” actor revealed one of the first people she called after receiving her diagnosis: Christina Applegate.

“I called her, and she answered the phone, and she said, ‘Which one is it?’ And I said, ‘It’s breast cancer.’ And she said, ‘I effing knew it.’” Fischer recalled of their conversation. “She’s salty. Salty language that one. I love her for it.”

Fischer said Applegate put her in touch with fellow survivors and that they took on her journey “together.”

As for telling her children, Weston Lee, 13, and Harper Marie, 10, Fischer said she and her husband “sat them down” and were “very honest with them.”

“They’re 10 and they’re 13, and they were going to be living in the house while I went through this. They’re going to see it. And the biggest thing that I wanted them to know was that any ways that I seemed sick during this process were side effects of treatments. They weren’t cancer making me sick,” she said.

“That distinction, I think, really put them at ease. And then we just kind of did it together. And they were amazing.”

Where things stand

Along with chemotherapy, Fischer said she also underwent a lumpectomy and radiation. Following her latest screenings, the actor said she’s cancer free, though she’s continuing to take tamoxifen and Herceptin for the next year.

Fischer told Hoda that two saving graces during her experience were maintaining a sense of humor and normalcy.

“Humor helped through all of this. And working helped. And staying in the world helped,” she said. “My oncology nurse, Ron, was an amazing man. … When I started chemotherapy, he said to me, ‘Listen, I want you to get up every day, and I want you to walk. Every day.’”

“‘I want you to drink a ton of water. Walking and water. That’s what I want you to do. And I want you to take care of those kids. The women who get up and at it are the women who do better in my experience.’”

Fischer said some of the best advice she received was to “live your life during this process,” while also listening to her body.

“I did that,” she said. “And some days I just walked circles in my own living room. Some days I walked all around the block. But I did every day get up and do those things. And I think it made a really big difference.”

Looking back at the past year, Fischer told Hoda that one of the biggest lessons she’s learned is the impact of people taking care of other people.

“So many people took care of me, and my family, and my children, and I am so grateful for it — in so many small ways,” she said. “And the thing is, is that everybody had the right way or the perfect way to do it.”

Fischer explained that some friends put her chemotherapy schedule on their calendars, while others sent thoughtful texts and picked her kids up from school. She said her mother-in-law recorded prayers that she would send before treatments.

The mother of two said this entire journey caused her to look at the world through a new lens of gratitude.

“I liked that people were annoyed if I was late with an email,” she said. “I liked being regarded as my old self, so to speak.”

“All of the most important things became so clear so quickly. And the cool thing is that that focus never leaves. So I will get to carry that with me now. … I’ll say I find the world to be such a beautiful place in all of its quirkiness.”

Fischer added that everyday annoyances have suddenly become “charming” to her.

“Like, you know, just traffic. ‘Oh, look at you, cute traffic. Look at all the people just goin’ places,’” she said. “How great that I get to sit in traffic. How cool.”

Fischer’s final takeaway from her experience is a message to all women: “Please don’t skip your mammogram appointment. Please get all the extra screenings that the doctor wants you to get.”

She credits the success of her treatments to her early diagnosis, encouraging more people to book the “annoying” appointment.

“If I had waited six more months, it could have been much worse. It could have spread. It was a very aggressive form of cancer,” Fischer said. “I’m really lucky that my cancer had not spread into my lymph nodes. It hadn’t spread anywhere else in my body.”

“My tumor was still very small, too small to feel,” she added. “That’s the thing. A self-exam would not have (caught the cancer). It really was that routine mammogram that started all of this. And I’m so grateful that I went to that appointment.”

“I hope that hearing my story will be comforting to any women out there also on this journey,” Fischer posted on Instagram following the interview. “I’m still walking through this every day. But there are more good days than bad. Being able to put my experience to use somehow helps a lot.” She then encouraged her followers to get their breast exams done and talk to their doctors about calculating their Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Score.




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MTV VJ Ananda Lewis chronicles Stage 4 breast cancer journey

MTV VJ Ananda Lewis chronicles Stage 4 breast cancer journey

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Fomer MTV VJ Ananda Lewis has been living with breast cancer for nearly six years and has taken holistic and traditional approaches to treating the disease, Some of her tumors, she says, are undetectable now.

“If you extended your life, you won,” Lewis said this week in a roundtable conversation with CNN’s Stephanie Elam, who is one of her best friends, and fellow breast cancer survivor Sara Sidner, also a CNN journalist. “Nobody gets out of here alive. That is just going to happen. Your ability and your responsibility is how you’re going to thrive. My quality of life is very important to me. … I know myself, I want to want to be here. So I had to do it a certain way for me.”

The 51-year-old, who rose to fame on BET’s “Teen Summit” and hosted “The Ananda Lewis Show” in the early aughts, found a lump in her breast in January 2019. She said it was probably “growing for a good while,” and she initially vigilantly pursued alternative treatments that helped keep the disease at bay. But ultimately she “got lazy,” she said, and ran out of money, resulting in a progression to Stage 4 last year.

“When you talk about our women, Black women, being the most susceptible for dying from this, there are a lot of things tied up in those two things that make that statistic make a little sense,” Lewis said.

“Our inability to be comfortable with doctors goes way back. We have a rightful distrust of the medical industry that we need to get over, but we are not going to negate that it came from somewhere and that it’s real.”

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the United States except for skin cancers, according to the American Cancer Society. It accounts for about 1 in 3 new female cancers each year, and Black women are disproportionately affected by the disease. The median age at diagnosis is slightly younger for Black women (60) compared to white women (64), and Black women are more likely to die from breast cancer than any other race or ethnic group.

Upon learning about the tumor, Lewis said her cancer had progressed to the point where her doctors — whom she described as “traditional oncologists” — recommended that she have a double mastectomy. Lewis opted to try alternative therapies even though her friends, family and her sister, who is a physician and cancer survivor, gave her grief about it.

“I know people that [surgery and aggressive treatments] worked for. But this journey is very personal and you have to do what works for you and only you,” Lewis said. “My body did this, there’s something to understand there.”

Lewis said she wanted to “figure it out” on her own and reduce the environmental toxins, emotional stress and “all the whys of cancer” that contribute to the onset of the disease. “If we don’t start addressing those, the other stuff is a half-measure to me, which is why I didn’t do it,” she said of avoiding surgery, chemotherapy and other conventional breast cancer treatments.

At first, her plan was to get the “excessive toxins” out of herself because she believes bodies are “intelligent” and “brilliantly made and we mess them up.” She decided to “keep” her tumor and work it out of her body a different way, including detoxing, completely changing her diet and working on her “emotional landscapes.”

She meticulously took notes about what she ate, how she felt and even how she breathed. That resulted in “a slow-it-down period” that she thought was very effective. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and none of her resources were accessible anymore.

Meanwhile, the tumor kept growing.

Lewis relocated to Arizona and integrated conventional and natural approaches to treat the disease. She underwent insulin-potentiated chemotherapy, detoxed and did more alternative treatments that brought the cancer down to Stage 2 in 2021. But, she said, she “ran out of money” and insurance did not cover her holistic approach.

When she couldn’t keep up with the regimen prescribed to her, she said, “I just started letting my life be normal again, and this takes everything, and I wanted something back,” she said. “Cancer has a funny way of just continuing to grow.”

By October 2023, her scans showed that the cancer had metastasized up her spine, through her hips, into her lymph nodes and “almost everywhere but my brain.”

“It was the worst I’d ever been,” she said, adding that after getting a bone scan, she felt the worst pain she ever had. It also was the first time she ever “had a conversation with death,” feeling frustrated and a little angry at herself.

Through tears, Lewis told Elam and Sidner that she fractured her hip because of the bone issues she was experiencing and couldn’t get out of bed for eight weeks. When she got her insurance back, she jumped back into treatment and became eligible for new types of medicine.

Lewis said she has kept up “the integrative side” of her treatment approach, which she believes helps reduce the side effects of some of the drugs and has shrunk her tumors. Some of them are now undetectable.

For Sidner, it was Stage 3 breast cancer, which she discovered last year at age 51. She took a wholly different approach than Lewis did: She was determined to “cut it out, chemo it out, fight it out, burn [it] in hell,” wanting an immediate response. Although her cancer was in one breast, she had a double mastectomy.

“What I suddenly learned — a very hard lesson for Sara Sidner — was that it wasn’t going to be immediate and I had to deal with that. And I was pissed,” she said.

Both women expressed how important it is that women do self-exams, get to know their bodies and advocate for themselves.

Elam, who called Lewis and Sidner her sisters and “chosen family,” delved deep into both women’s experiences in hopes that it would help others.

“We are there for each other in the good and the bad. So when they both began their breast cancer journeys, I didn’t know how best to support them and I also realized I had no idea what modern cancer treatment looks like,” Elam wrote on Instagram.

The TV journalist said she was grateful for their willingness to speak with her and to “fully open up for the world.”

“If we can get just one woman to get their mammogram because of this conversation, that’s success. I want everyone to live long, healthy lives,” she wrote.

Lewis registered her response in the post’s comments section.

“Whew chile! The ride of [sic] die is REAL! It was incredible to have this conversation with you @stephelamtv and @sarasidnertv Hoping for the best outcomes for EVERYONE pushing through life with cancer Love you!”




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October Is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

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This month, we look at local resources for education and support for breast cancer patients and survivors.

This year, in light of an unfortunate slow but steady uptick in breast cancer diagnoses, we seek to bring attention back to the month long observance of breast cancer awareness. Breast Cancer is the second most common cancer diagnosed in women, and was responsible for over 55,000 deaths in the united states in 2023.   Men are also diagnosed in one out of every hundred cases, with a proportional fatality rate.  It is difficult for those diagnosed, as well as their families and friends, to cope with this frightening, life changing illness. We wanted to share educational and health resources, as well as local charity events and ways to contribute in the community in support of those fighting this chronic illness.

  • The national Center for Disease Control (CDC) offers a helpful educational guide on cancer symptoms, treatments and screenings, and more.  This can be useful as a starting point alongside conversation with your Doctor.
  • This page from the American Cancer Association also highlights different types of treatments and the steps for each type of treatment.
  • The Boston Public Health Commission’s Pink and Black Campaign is an ongoing education and advocacy movement aimed at supporting ethnic minorities and female survivors of breast cancer.   The page linked offers numerous resources and statistics to explore.
  • The Cancer Support Community of Massachusetts offers a help line, as well as digital support and wellness groups for survivor, families, and caregivers, as well as bereavement groups for those that have lost a loved one.
  • The Ellie Fund is a Needham based charity that offers information and support for those struggling with a Breast Cancer diagnosis.  Be sure to check their events calendar for 2024 and beyond for community events donation .
  • The Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition is a local nonprofit dedicated to education and prevention-based advocacy.   They offer their own educational resources, web based and in person events and volunteer opportunities.
  • There are more Breast Cancer Awareness events occurring in the Boston area, including fundraisers, networking events, dances and social activities, and more.

For breast cancer treatment and screening, listed below are several major hospital services in the greater Boston area:

Have a safe and healthy month, please reach out to us at the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) if you have any additional resources or events you would like us to feature here for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.


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October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

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Breast Cancer Awareness Month can mean different things to different people. For some, it’s a trigger — 31 days in the fall of pink-ribbon reminders of a disease that forever changed them. For others, it’s a chance to show their support for the more than 2 million women around the world who are diagnosed with the disease each year. Understanding the goals behind the global campaign and the emotions felt by the many different people living with the disease may help you decide if and how you want to commemorate the month.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is an international health campaign that’s held every October. The month aims to promote screening and prevention of the disease, which affects 2.3 million women worldwide. Known best for its pink theme color, the month features a number of campaigns and programs — conducted by groups ranging from breast cancer advocacy organizations to local community organizations to major retailers — aimed at: supporting people diagnosed with breast cancer, including those with metastatic breast cancer educating people about breast cancer risk factors encouraging women to go for regular breast cancer screening starting at age 40 or earlier, depending on personal breast cancer risk fundraising for breast cancer research.

In the month of October, there are also specific dates designed to raise awareness of specific groups within the breast cancer community.

Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day (October 13)
October 13 is nationally recognized in the U.S. as Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day. About 168,000 women in the U.S. are estimated to have metastatic breast cancer (cancer that spreads beyond the breast to other parts of the body). Researchers estimate that about 30% of early-stage breast cancers eventually metastasize. The day, which began in 2009, is meant to educate the public about the need for more money to go to the study of metastatic breast cancer and the development of new metastatic cancer treatments.

Men’s Breast Cancer Awareness Week (October 17–23)
Although breast cancer is much more common in women, breast cancer affects men, too. In 2021, President Joe Biden designated October 17 to October 23 Men’s Breast Cancer Awareness Week. According to the American Cancer Society, 2,790 men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2024, and about 530 are expected to die from the disease.

The history of Breast Cancer Awareness Month

The event began in 1985 as a week-long awareness campaign by the American Cancer Society, in partnership with Imperial Chemical Industries, a British company that made tamoxifen. The campaign eventually grew into a month-long event.

In 1992, the pink ribbon came into play after Alexandra Penney, SELF magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, partnered with Evelyn Lauder, Estée Lauder’s Senior Corporate Vice President and a breast cancer survivor, to distribute pink ribbons after the magazine’s second annual Breast Cancer Awareness Month issue.

Other variations of the pink ribbon have emerged in recent years to raise awareness that all people with breast cancer are not the same. These include ribbons for raising awareness about metastatic breast cancer, men with breast cancer, inflammatory breast cancer, and more.

Source: Breastcancer.org


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