Working While Grieving: How John McCain’s Cancer Battle Affected Meghan McCain’s Hosting Experience On ‘The View’

“My dad was dying of glioblastoma. I got permission from the network to take every other Friday off to go home to Arizona and help him get treatment,” she explained in the interview with Variety. “If I was cold, with this giant show with a group of strangers, I was trying to do well. There were never bad stories leaked about anyone else, and there was certainly bad behavior that could have leaked.”

It was her father that convinced her to take the job in 2017. He died the following year.

It was on Meghan’s second day back from maternity leave that she decided to leave the show. She had given birth to daughter Liberty in September 2020, and she was suffering from severe postpartum anxiety. She experienced “irrational fears that someone would kidnap or hurt her daughter,” and she was quite fearful about going back on television.

McCain will be tackling all of these highly sensitive topics and more in her new audio memoir. “You've heard from everybody else, now hear it from me in my own voice,” she wrote on her Instagram page.

 

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McCain explained that she was working on the show as the only conservative during the Trump administration.

“I felt like a lot of people took out their anger on the administration on me because I was the only person in the building who was a Republican,” she expressed. “I feel like I have post-traumatic stress from having to feud with the president when my dad was dying, and then having to feud with the president after he died. And I haven't fully healed.”

Despite the emotionally taxing experience on the small screen, the Arizona native concluded with her fondest memories on the show, which wasn’t all bad for McCain.

“Interviewing presidential candidates. Having my dad on. Having friends come. [Actor] Jamie Lee Curtis, who I've become friends with. We bonded over having famous dads,” she said. “I love [Shark Tank‘s] Mark Cuban. There are a lot of amazing people on the show. I love so many guys in the crew. I love the wardrobe people.”

Working While Grieving

Not only is it hard for patients to continue working through a cancer diagnosis, but it can also be quite difficult for loved ones.

Some people prefer the distraction of work, but when your workplace is a talk show on TV continually talking about politics and present-day issues, it’s understandable that it was hard for Meghan to focus on anything aside from her politician father, who was dying of cancer, coupled with dealing with a pregnancy and coping with post-partum following the baby’s birth.

Depression after a Cancer Diagnosis Can Affect the Whole Family

Senator McCain's Glioblastoma Battle

On July 14, 2017, McCain underwent surgery at the Mayo Clinic to remove a blood clot above his eye. During the course of that procedure, doctors noticed a growth that was later identified as a glioblastoma.

Sen. McCain, who was 80 at the time, had surgery to remove to tumor. He underwent chemotherapy and radiation.

As a melanoma survivor, McCain had a number of underlying conditions. He also developed diverticulitis that required surgery one month after he was diagnosed with his tumor.

He battled until the end, but on August 25, 2018 he lost his fight, 13 months after his diagnosis.

Optune For Glioblastoma

The progress in glioblastoma has been slow, but Optune represents a promising advancement in treating brain tumors.

Optune, approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2015, works by disrupting the division of cancer cells in tumors and delaying the progression of the cancer in some patients. Treatments such as Optune are often referred to as tumor-treating fields. This, in combination with standard treatment, may add two years to the median survival rate for glioblastoma in about half of patients who use it, and five years of additional life for about a third of patients.

Related: Could a New Treatment Have Saved John McCain? Fighting Brain Cancer With Electric Fields

"There's been the very exciting development of tumor treating fields, which are electrical fields that have been applied to the brain," Dr. Suriya Jeyapalan, a neurologist at Tufts Medical Center, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview. "They're basically these adhesive pads, front and back, right and left. They're connected to a device that now weighs about 2 and 1/2 pounds. It generates this alternating electric current that has been shown in a major randomized controlled trial to add on another 50% of survival at two years."

New Hope for Fighting Glioblastoma

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