Women Who Rocked Breast Cancer
- February is National Cancer Prevention Month.
- Research shows that well-known names have a significant impact on raising awareness and getting people to make appointments for cancer screenings such as mammograms and colonoscopies.
- For breast cancer, early detection can make a huge difference in a successful outcome. Dr. Elizabeth Comen gives SurvivorNet an outline of things that you can be talking to your doctor about: Getting check-ups, getting mammograms (scans of your breasts), and changing lifestyle habits.
So, what do Christina Applegate, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Sheryl Crow, Jillian Barberie, and Cynthia Nixon all have in common? Ok, easy one, they all beat breast cancer, not to mention they’re all beautiful.
Christina Applegate
Read MoreThe mom of Sadie Grace LeNoble, 10, shared some thoughtful advice on how she keeps her daughter’s future health in mind. “The chances that my daughter is BRCA positive are very high,” she had said. “I look at her and feed her the cleanest foods. I try to keep her stress levels down. I'm doing everything I can on my end knowing that in 20 years, she'll have to start getting tested. Hopefully by then there will be advancements. It breaks my heart to think that's a possibility.”
Julia Louis-Dreyfuss
Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, 60, announced her breast cancer diagnosis on Twitter to millions of followers in 2017. "One in eight women get breast cancer. Today, I'm the one." The response was overwhelming, even Hillary Clinton wished the star well. Louis-Dreyfus, who some may know as Seinfeld’s sidekick ‘Elaine’ on her other hit show, told Vanity Fair in a 2019 interview. "In many ways it was very nice to get the support from the outside world," she says. "Having said that, I didn't consider that it would've taken on a life of its own, which it did. It's such a personal thing that I never would have put anything like that out there if I hadn't had to."
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Sheryl Crow
Singer Sheryl Crow, 58, was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer in February 2006 at 44 years old. She had had a routine mammogram and wound up having a lumpectomy in both breasts, and also had radiation (to zap any potential cancer cells missed in surgery). Crow opened up to Health magazine about her experience.
"With your diagnosis comes a lesson, and for women who've shared their lesson with me, it's almost always the same," she said. "Women are overachievers. We take care of the people around us while we work and do a thousand [other] things.” The rocker gave some sound advice to women who have gone through or are going through breast cancer, that they need to learn “how to put on their oxygen mask first before putting it on anyone else,” which was difficult for her, she had admitted.
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Jillian Barberie
Former FOX anchor (and podcast host of Ask Jillian) Jillian Barberie, 54, is also a breast cancer survivor. The single mother of two, Ruby, 13, and Rocco, 11, is one lucky mama with kids who helped look after her during her 2019 cancer battle in Los Angeles. "The kids have been so supportive," she told ET Canada, "I think if I didn't have that, it would be really hard because everyone is in Canada. So I'm so fortunate that my kids are so sensitive and so kind and loving." The spunky Canadian pushed through after a double mastectomy, chemo, then radiation. “I was aggressive and wanted it gone,” she stated on her Twitter account in August of 2019. “10 months later, it is,”
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Every breast cancer is different. I had stage 2 and 3 breast & lymph node so I did double mastectomy, chemo then radiation. I asked my oncologist what she would do if I was her mother, sister or daughter. I was aggressive and I wanted it gone. 10 months later…… it is. https://t.co/hhtI30iwhQ
Jillian Barberie (@askjillian) August 25, 2019
The media personality also noted that her kids had helped her shave her head. "It's a little jarring to get used to yourself without hair," she said, although she said she had no problem rocking her bald head at work shortly after. "And I did it very quickly, I let my kids shave my head because my hair was literally coming out in strands after 2 chemo treatments."
Cynthia Nixon
Cynthia Nixon, aka ‘Miranda’ from HBO’s Sex and the City, 54, found a lump in her breast in 2006 and has said that she started having mammograms when she was 35 because of her mother having breast cancer. She kept her kids Samantha and Charlie informed along the way (she now has another son, Max). "I really wanted them to know what was happening," Nixon said in an old interview with Meredith Vieira on Today. "Because you hear people whispering, you sense that there is something going on.” She even brought them with her when she talked to the surgeon about her surgery. ” I think it was so reassuring to hear a professional from outside, talking about statistics and how really this is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things." Luckily, her tumor was really small and she was able to get through everything without any complications.
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Learning About Breast Cancer Prevention
Dr. Elizabeth Comen from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center explained to SurvivorNet in a previous interview “that there are a lot of, what we call, modifiable risk factors for breast cancer and non modifiable risk factors. And what we hope here is to really walk through some of these with you, so that you feel more empowered to understand what are the things that you might be able to change in your life to help decrease your risk of breast cancer,” she said. “And what are the things that you can’t changelike who your parents are and what are some of the genes that you may have been born with. And also, what we hope to go over here is how might you catch your breast cancer early, or how might you be screened for breast cancer, what are the guidelines there, and how that might affect what age you start getting mammograms. Or maybe you drink a little bit less and exercise a little bit more. And maybe that helps you understand your own personal risk of breast cancer, moving forward.” These are all things to think about and ask your doctor which tests may be right for you.
Breast Cancer: Introduction to Prevention & Screening
Talking to Your Kids About Cancer
Discussing cancer with kids can be complicated. You want them to know what to expect, but at the same time you want to be gentle. Moms going through cancer like Cynthia Nixon and Jillian Barberie were open with their kids and they wound up being much stronger than most would thing as far as how they processed the news. Here is some more advice from a parent affected by cancer on how you can talk to your kids about this difficult topic.
Talking to Kids About Cancer: Be Open as Much as You Can
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