Normani and Her Mom Share the News
- Singer Normani, 24, shared her mom’s news via Instagram that her breast cancer has returned.
- Normani is an ambassador for the American Cancer Society (ACS).
- Normani’s mom, Andrea Hamilton, caught her initial cancer diagnosis 19 years ago by doing a self-exam on her breasts.
The singer, who is a former member of the band Fifth Harmony (or “5H’ as some fans call it), shared on Sunday that her mom, Andrea Hamilton, had a return of her breast cancer. Normani created an Instagram story sending love to her mom and sharing the recent diagnosis. In the original post, Hamilton wrote: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I did it once and I'll do it again!”
Read MoreHamilton’s Cancer Past
Normani opened up about her mom’s previous breast cancer diagnosis in an interview with Paper magazine in 2018. She said, “My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was around 5 years old,” said Normani. “It was the scariest point in all of our lives.”Hamilton sat in on the interview, too, and said, “I didn’t know much about breast cancer and though I was always educated by my doctors to do my self breast exams and everything, I took it for granted. You can kind of turn a blind eye until it actually happens to you. I was about 33 years old and I wasn’t doing my breast exams on a regular basis.”
Related: Getting to Know Your Breasts with Self-Exams
“I don’t know what it was but something told me to check that day that I found the lump. I immediately went to the doctor. By doing my own self-breast exam I caught it at an early stage.”
Close the Gap: Black Women & Breast Cancer
Hamilton is a Black woman, and statistically, Black women have to wait longer for treatment and their mortality rate is higher than that of white breast cancer patients. This is unacceptable and it’s something we must work together to fix.
Related: Close the Gap: Racial Disparities in Cancer Care Are Devastating Let's Change Things
SurvivorNet is committed to closing the racial gap that exists in cancer care in America, and has partnered with NYU Langone Health's Perlmutter Cancer Center to help close the gap in prevention, care, and survival rates. Cancer survival rates are higher for white people than for Black people in the U.S., and that simply must change.
Dr. Anita Johnson, chief of surgery at Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Atlanta. told SurvivorNet, "When it comes to breast cancer, the mortality rates for African American women are substantially higher than Caucasian women.”
Dr. Johnson said, “They [African American women] often present with triple-negative breast cancer, which is a more aggressive type of breast cancer, which always requires chemotherapy and has a higher recurrence rate."
Fighting Breast Cancer Together
As Normani and her mom reckon with this health news, Hamilton clearly has the love and support of her daughter through this journey. Supportive community be it family, friends, or partner is beneficial on the cancer journey.
And while the weight is on the patient’s shoulders, it may feel less heavy with others undergoing the emotional journey with you.
The survival rates for breast cancer vary, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS), depending on the type and stage of breast cancer. And while we don’t know what stage her mom’s cancer is in, the “relative survival rate” is five years for breast cancer, from the time of diagnosis. But, clearly, Hamilton is a fighter and survivor. And we’ll be rooting for her and Normani on this journey.
Dr. Elizabeth Comen Explains Breast Self-Exams
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
