Just as CNN’s Sara Sidner arrived in Israel to spend three weeks covering the conflict between Israel and Hamas, she received news that a concerning mammogram required a biopsy. Now, she reveals that she has stage 3 breast cancer.
Sidner, CNN senior national correspondent and morning edition anchor for CNN News Central, ended her broadcast Monday morning by asking viewers to remember the names of eight women they know and love. “Statistically, one of them will or will have breast cancer,” she said. “I’m that one out of eight in my friend group.”
“I have never been sick a single day in my life. 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,” she said, visibly choked up. “It’s hard to say it out loud.”
Sidner told viewers that she is in her second month of chemotherapy and has radiation treatments and a double mastectomy on the road ahead.
“Stage 3 is no longer a death sentence for the vast majority of women,” she continued. “But here’s the reality that really shocked my system when I started researching more about breast cancer: If you’re a black woman, you’re 41% more likely to die from breast cancer than your white counterparts.”
The award-winning news anchor then asked her “black, white and brown sisters” to please, “for the love of God,” get mammograms every year and do self-exams so they can hopefully catch it before she does. . . Sidner later said she thanked cancer for choosing her. “I’m learning that no matter what we go through in life, I’m still madly in love with this life,” she continued excitedly.
“And now just being alive makes me feel very different. I’m happier because I don’t stress over little things that used to bother me. Now, every day I breathe a little more, I can celebrate that I am still here with you. I am here with my co-hosts, my colleagues, my family and I can love, cry, laugh and hope… and that, my dear friends, is enough.”
Sidner traveled to Israel in October to cover the war between Israel and Hamas before she was informed that her mammogram results were concerning and that she would need a biopsy as soon as possible. The journalist spent the next three weeks reporting from the war zone.
“Seeing the kind of suffering that was happening where I was and seeing that people are still living through the worst that has ever happened to them with grace and kindness, I was impressed by their resilience,” Sidner told People on Monday. “In some strange way, it helped me get my own perspective on what I’m going to face.”
Shortly after Sidner returned to New York, a biopsy revealed that she had breast cancer that had advanced to stage 3. “When I got the news, I didn’t tell anyone, not even my mother, not my husband, not even my husband. to my sisters, nor to my friends,” he said. she told the media. “I just needed to process it.”
Although the presenter initially thought that this was the end and began to write goodbye letters to her loved ones, after a few days of processing the diagnosis she decided not to give up. “I just made a decision,” she told People. “I told him, ‘No, you’re going to live, you’re going to stop this and you’re going to do everything in your power to survive.’ Period.'”
Sidner said she now approaches each new day excited for whatever lies ahead. She told People that despite feeling fatigued and dealing with her hair loss, she hasn’t missed a day of work since she received her diagnosis. Two days after starting her first round of chemotherapy, she was reporting from the red carpet at the 17th annual CNN Heroes on December 10, and then hosted a live New Year’s Eve special until 2 a.m.
