Politics

CNN Anchor Announces Drastic Surgery Amid Cancer Battle: ‘I Like Those Odds’

Published

6 months ago

May 22, 2024

CNN morning anchor Sara Sidner made a dramatic announcement on Tuesday that she will be going under the knife in a bid to save her life as she battles stage 3 breast cancer.

On her show, Sidner told viewers that doctors believe her best course of action is to seek drastic surgery after unsuccessfully treating her cancer with chemotherapy for the past five months. “After five months of chemo, I have not yet become cancer-free. The next phase is a double mastectomy,” she said on Tuesday, according to People Magazine. “A 2016 study found that the 10 year survival rate for a bilateral mastectomy is 90.3%,” she continued. “I like those odds, so I am going under the knife tomorrow and will be out recovering for a few weeks.”

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She did not give a timeline for when she might return to the network that has been her home for nearly 17 years. “What I have learned so far in my cancer journey is treating it is more a marathon than a sprint,” she added. In the meantime, Kate Bolduan and John Berman, who have co-anchored CNN News Central since April 2022, will serve as fill-ins.

In January, Sidner spoke with the publication about the impact that her diagnosis had on her mental health as she navigated feelings of helplessness, misery, and anger before resolving to fight her cancer. “I just made a decision. I’m like, ‘No, you’re going to live and you’re going to stop this and you’re going to do every single thing in your arsenal to survive this. Period.’ And I have been so much happier in my life since … I mean happier than I was before cancer,” she said. Sidner also said she promised herself that she would not put her life on hold — and she hasn’t, appearing at numerous functions in the past months, though she admits it has been a quieter struggle with the zapped energy as a result of her chemo.

“I am fatigued and I am slower, and I have to be more thoughtful about how I take care of myself,” she said in January. Sharing her own story, she added, is her way of showing viewers that a cancer diagnosis is “not the end of your world.”

“I don’t put my personal stuff out there that often, but I can do something for someone because I have cancer. I can warn somebody,” she says, referencing a statistic that one in eight women develop breast cancer in their lifetimes. “To all my sisters, Black, White, and Brown: Please, for the love of God, do your checks yourself. … Don’t play with this, just please try to catch it before I did.”