Kat Timpf's Battle With Stage Zero Breast Cancer
- Fox News host Kat Timpf, 37, has revealed she’s now pregnant with her second child, following a double mastectomy for stage zero breast cancer, also known as Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS). DCIS is abnormal cells that line the ducts in a breast. A normal breast contains many ducts (which carry milk to the nipple in a lactating woman).
- Despite a challenging year, the comedian has leaned on humor throughout her cancer journey, and she announced her pregnancy with a punchline to match.
- Dr. Dana Chase, a Gynecologic Oncologist at UCLA Health, reminds us to focus on the good, stay positive, and do things that bring you joy [like making fun of your laugh] as much as you can.
- “We know, actually from good studies, that emotional health, quality of life is associated with survival, meaning better quality of life is associated with better survival, better outcomes,” Dr. Chase tells SurvivorNet.
Timpf, a regular Gutfeld! panelist, revealed the news to a live audience at one of her recent comedy shows, posting a clip on Instagram Wednesday night that showed her spinning around with her shirt partially lifted to show her stomach.
Read MoreIn the footage, the Michigan native, who now lives in New York City, told the crowd before showing off her bump, “Well, I actually have a secret. …See that? Thank you! Are you guys surprised? So was I. I shouldn’t have been though, ’cause I’m married to a veteran, and the Army always does seem to take a while to pull out of something.”View this post on Instagram
Timpf’s husband, Cameron Friscia, is a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan.
Later in the set, Timpf, who turns 38 on October 29, turned the joke toward her own medical history.
“At least I’m doing it with such a great guy,” she continued. “My birthday is coming up next month, and I told him, I said, ‘Babe, you don’t even have to get me anything. Better yet, get yourself something. A vasectomy.’ I’ve had enough surgery. It’s someone else’s turn.”
The TV personality has kept her sense of humor front and center throughout her recovery.
In March 2025, just weeks after her diagnosis, she shared a photo of herself outside Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC, captioning it with a rundown of every medical hurdle still standing between her and the gym.
“Once I recover from childbirth, my mole removal scars heal, I get a double mastectomy, get rid of my cancer, have breast reconstruction surgery & am physically capable of getting back in the gym it’s OVER FOR U,” she wrote on Instagram.
View this post on Instagram
That post followed her February 2025 announcement, which she dubbed “unconventional.” In it, Timpf shared that she had just become a mom, and that she’d learned she had breast cancer roughly 15 hours before her labor began.
“Now, before you worry, my doctor says it’s Stage 0 and is confident that it almost certainly hasn’t spread,” she wrote on X and Instagram. “Or, as I’ve explained to the few people I’ve managed to tell about it so far: Don’t freak out. It’s just, like, a LITTLE bit of cancer.”
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She admitted the day was anything but calm. “Still, it was not a chill day,” she wrote. “I woke up more-than-a-week-past-due pregnant, completely consumed by doing everything I could to get the baby out.”
Hours later, the focus had shifted from delivering her baby to treating her cancer, as she shuffled between doctor’s appointments. “I sat and listened as they told me that the best course of action would likely be a double mastectomy as soon as possible,” she recalled.
Understanding Kat Timpf’s Early-Stage Breast Cancer
Stage zero breast cancer, or ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), is made up of abnormal cells that line a duct in the breast. A normal breast contains many ducts that carry milk to the nipple in a lactating woman. DCIS is not invasive, meaning it has not spread outside the milk duct into other parts of the breast.
WATCH: I Have Stage Zero Breast Cancer: What Should I Do?
SurvivorNet experts say that if DCIS is left untreated, it may develop into a more advanced breast cancer. Dr. Ann Partridge, an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the founder and director of the Program for Young Adults with Breast Cancer, has told SurvivorNet that DCIS is “a pre-cancer, technically.”
She explained that stage zero breast cancer is “something that may turn into invasive breast cancer. Invasive breast cancer is the kind of breast cancer that has the potential to not only grow in your breast but to spread to other places in the body and ultimately hurt someone more than just needing a breast surgery.”
The current standard of care for DCIS is surgery, either a lumpectomy or mastectomy, sometimes followed by radiation and hormone therapy. The good news is that the outlook is excellent: according to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, women with stage zero breast cancer have a 98 percent survival rate after 10 years.
The Debate Over Treating Low-Risk DCIS
How aggressively to treat DCIS remains one of the big debates in breast cancer care, and a major 2024 study added new evidence.
The COMET trial compared active monitoring, meaning breast imaging and exams every six months, with standard treatment of surgery with or without radiation. The trial enrolled women 40 and older with low-risk, hormone receptor-positive grade 1 or 2 DCIS. Results were presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in December 2024 and published in JAMA.
After two years, the risk of developing invasive breast cancer was nearly the same in both groups: 4.2 percent with active monitoring and 5.9 percent with standard care. A separate analysis published in JAMA Oncology found that women under active monitoring reported similar physical, emotional and psychological outcomes to those who had upfront treatment.
Still, the findings come with important caveats. Researchers acknowledged that more invasive cancers may show up with longer follow-up, particularly in the monitoring group, and further analyses are planned at 5, 7 and 10 years. The women in the trial were also much older than Timpf, with a median age of about 64, and treatment decisions depend on the specifics of each patient’s diagnosis.
“But I think if a woman is seeing a physician who says you need surgery, I think it’s really important that she maybe get a little more information,” Dr. Partridge said.
Dr. Chirag Shah, director of breast radiation oncology at the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center, says recent studies show the risk of dying from stage zero breast cancer is very low, which has led some doctors to consider less aggressive treatment. But he cautions that monitoring alone isn’t yet standard practice.
“Protocols, such as the COMET trial, are studying the use of surveillance regimens, but this is not standard of care and is experimental at this time, and active surveillance is not something that we would recommend for patients outside of a clinical study,” Dr. Shah said.
Finding a Balance Between Screening and Treating
Dr. Alana Welm of the Huntsman Cancer Institute has told SurvivorNet that doctors need to strike a balance between screening and identifying cancers that actually require treatment.
Screening leads to more cancer diagnoses, and some of those cancers may never have caused a problem. Dr. Welm says treating them can expose patients to unnecessary side effects. Stage zero breast cancer is often picked up through screening, and doctors don’t always agree on whether it needs treatment or monitoring.
Pregnancy After Breast Cancer
For many young survivors, the question of having a baby after breast cancer is a big one.
Dr. Partridge also led the POSITIVE trial, which followed women with hormone receptor-positive early breast cancer who paused their hormone therapy to try to conceive. The trial found that taking that break didn’t worsen short-term outcomes. Nearly three-quarters of participants had at least one pregnancy, and birth defects were rare, at about 2 percent.
“Pregnancy after breast cancer is a very personal decision,” Dr. Partridge said, adding that women should weigh factors including their fertility, their prior treatment and their risk of recurrence.
The POSITIVE trial studied women with invasive breast cancer rather than DCIS, but it offers reassuring context for survivors who hope to grow their families.
The Importance of Laughter & Positivity
Like many survivors who turn to humor, Timpf has met adversity with optimism, without losing her sense of self. That instinct may do more than lift her spirits: research indexed by the National Library of Medicine suggests that patients who watch funny movies need less pain medication.
Learn to Accept Yourself — A Huge Part of Living With Cancer
Another example of the importance of positivity amid tough times comes from stand-up comedian Jesus Trejo in Long Beach, California.
Trejo became a caregiver for both of his parents after his mother was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor and his father was later diagnosed with colon cancer. But instead of panicking and focusing on the devastating situation, the only child stepped up to care for his parents with love and laughter.
In a previous interview with SurvivorNet, Trejo opened up about putting his career aside to care for his parents in their time of need, while still making time to smile along the way.
Stand-Up Comedian & Cancer Caregiver, Jesus Trejo Reminds Us That “Laughter is a Game-Changer”
“The only advice I have for anyone watching this is laugh, and laugh often, laugh at yourself. Don’t take yourself seriously. Things are already bad. Because once you do that, it’s a game-changer,” Trejo told SurvivorNet.
He also says the laughter itself might be brief, but “the effects of it just reverberate through your body, and can change an already bad situation into a better one.”
Anecdotal evidence from SurvivorNet experts suggests that a positive mindset can affect a cancer prognosis.
Dr. Zuri Murrell, of Cedars-Sinai, told SurvivorNet in an earlier interview, “My patients who thrive, even with stage 4 cancer, from the time that they, about a month after they’re diagnosed, I kind of am pretty good at seeing who is going to be OK. Now doesn’t that mean I’m good at saying that the cancer won’t grow.”
SurvivorNetTV Presents: The Power of Talking About Cancer
“But I’m pretty good at telling what kind of patients are going to still have this attitude and probably going to live the longest, even with bad, bad disease. And those are patients who have gratitude in life.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Dana Chase, a Gynecologic Oncologist at UCLA Health, also says it’s important to focus on the good, stay positive, and do things that bring you joy to the degree you’re able to amid battling a disease like cancer.
“We know, actually from good studies, that emotional health, quality of life is associated with survival, meaning better quality of life is associated with better survival, better outcomes,” Dr. Chase said in an earlier interview.
SurvivorNetTV Presents: Maintaining a Positive Headspace
Helping You With Questions For Your Doctor
To further help you on your cancer journey, explore SurvivorNet’s proprietary AI tool, “My Health Questions.” This powerful resource can help you come up with helpful questions to ask your care team for an upcoming appointment, and it offers so much more.
WATCH: How One Cancer Survivor and Her Sister Used “My Health Questions” to Navigate Care
This powerful resource, embedded across the SurvivorNet website, bridges that gap by offering on-demand explanations of treatment options, clinical trials, side effects, insurance concerns, and more.
Users can ask questions conversationally, either by typing or using their voice, and receive answers tailored to their individual profiles. If patients don’t know where to start, we provide prompt questions to get them started.
Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
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