Rejoicing in Every Remission Milestone
- Amy Robach, 48, just celebrated her eighth year of being cancer free in 2021. And on a recent episode of The View, she shares exactly why she makes a point to do something big for the milestone every year.
- Robach was initially diagnosed during an on-air mammogram that was part of a Good Morning America breast cancer awareness campaign. After Robach's tumor was detected, she had a bilateral mastectomy and six months of chemotherapy.
- A cancer diagnosis can change your life. But as we've seen in the case of Robach, you can thrive on the other side of treatment.
The 48-year-old TV icon just celebrated her eighth year being cancer free, and she made sure to commemorate the milestone in a couple of big ways. For starters, she ran the Berlin marathon alongside her husband Andrew and her 68-year-old father. Then, she also went on a trip to Antarctica to report on climate change and even took in the truest sense of the phrase a “polar plunge” in the 28-degree, icy Arctic waters. But for Robach, these big efforts to celebrate how far she’s come are not out of the ordinary.
Read MoreBut these milestone markers mean a lot more to Robach than just a great excuse to celebrate. In fact, the activities she choses often push her body to its limits because of how cancer affected the way she perceived her body for a time.
“I lost trust in my body, and I think a lot of people do when they go through cancer It’s like it’s failed me,” she explained. “I went into a deep depression… and I kind of flipped it on its head.”
What she means by that is instead of focusing on the betrayal she felt from her body, Robach decided to push herself herself to her limits and “see how strong [her] body [could] actually be.”
“It’s not just about celebrating, but it’s about… doing something that I didn’t think I could do, and then seeing what I could do, and then feeling that strength in my body again,” she said.
Robach’s Cancer Journey
The journalist was diagnosed with stage two invasive breast cancer in 2013, and she has been in remission for the past eight years. Robach maintains a remarkably active lifestyle, and running is her favorite way to keep herself in shape, physically and mentally. She had no history of cancer in her family, and she was relatively young to be fighting this disease; Robach was 40 at the time of her diagnosis.
The Amy Robach Story
It was an on-air mammogram for a Good Morning America awareness campaign that revealed tumors in her breast. Following the tumor detection, Robach immediately started treatment. She had a bilateral mastectomy and six months of chemotherapy.
A mastectomy is the surgical removal of the breast. It may be the full or partial removal of one or both breasts as a way to remove cancer from that region of the body. Some women have preventative mastectomies if they're at a high risk of being diagnosed. For instance, if breast cancer runs in their family, or if they carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation.
When Robach agreed to get a live mammogram in front of millions of people on Good Morning America she never thought that the results would actually come back positive. The TV host admitted to SurvivorNet in a previous interview that she took the shocking news poorly and was even angry at her current husband for not reacting the way she wanted him to.
When Should I Get a Mammogram?
"I don't know how other people handle that news, but I didn't handle it well," Robach said. "I became an absolute wreck, a total mess. I had my husband on speaker phone at the time of diagnosis because he was 3,000 miles away … I remember the radiologist, because my husband said nothing, we were all shocked beyond belief, said into the phone, 'Mr. Shue, your wife's not taking the news very well.' …trying to get him to say something."
"I had an idea of what he should be doing, what he should be saying, what he should be feeling, and if he didn't do any of those things the way I wanted him to, or what I thought I needed, I was extra upset and extra angry."
She said they were already struggling when she got the cancer diagnosis. "So this kind of threw everything into a further tailspin, until it didn't … until we realized that we were only stronger together and that we had to give each other a break."
"My husband coined a phrase that I remind myself of everyday: 'Don't die before you die.' I have used that, instead of feeling like I'm a victim, like this happened to me, I really feel like, what can I do to make my body stronger? So for me, I've been weight lifting and running. I've taken some control back. I might not have the breasts I once had, but I've got guns I never had before."
Thriving as a Survivor
A cancer diagnosis can change your life. But as we've seen in the case of Amy Robach, you can thrive on the other side of treatment.
Take Marecya Burton, for example. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at just 20 years old. Burton was a college student-athlete looking forward to graduation at the time, but all that had to change when she was forced to move home to start treatment.
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"That was definitely challenging for me," Burton said in a previous interview with SurvivorNet. "I was looking forward to graduating."
She also had planned on pursuing a law degree after graduation another dream she had to give up.
"I really had to, in a sense, put my life on hold," she said. "Sometimes I look at where I am, and I can't help but wonder, would I be further had I not had my diagnosis?"
But instead of law school, Burton found a new passion: teaching. She became a high school teacher in Baltimore, Maryland, and she's since made peace with her new direction in life.
"I wouldn't change my career for the world," she says. "It's so fulfilling."
Contributing: Joe Kerwin
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