CNN’s Sara Sidner Reveals Stage 3 Breast Cancer Diagnosis On-Air (VIDEO)

CNN‘s Sara Sidner made an emotional announcement live on-air on January 8.

The CNN News Central morning co-anchor announced that she has been diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer. “Just take a second to recall the names of eight women who you love and know in your life. … Statistically, one of them will get or have breast cancer. I am that one in eight in my friend group,” she said. “I have never been sick a day of my life. I don’t smoke. I rarely drink. Breast cancer does not run in my family, and yet here I am with Stage 3 breast cancer. It’s hard to say out loud.”

Sidner revealed she’s in her second month of chemo treatments and will do radiation and have a double mastectomy. “Stage 3 is not a death sentence anymore for the vast majority of women,” she continued before noting that Black women are 41 percent more likely to die from breast cancer than white women. And so she urged all to “get your mammograms every single year. Do your self-exams. Try to catch it before I did.”

She got emotional at the end of her message. “Now, here’s something I could never, ever have predicted what happened to me: I have thanked cancer for choosing me,” she said, explaining, “I’m learning that no matter what hell we go through in life, that I am still madly in love with this life, and just being alive feels really different for me now. I am happier because I don’t stress about foolish little things that used to annoy me. And now every single day that I breathe another breath, I can celebrate that I am still here with you, I am here with my co-anchors, my colleagues, my family, and I can love and cry and laugh and hope, and that, my dear friends, is enough.” Watch her full announcement below.

 

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Sidner anchored Big Picture with Sara Sidner on CNN’s subscription service, CNN+ (which only lasted about a month in 2022). CNN News Central, with Sidner, John Berman, and Kate Bolduan, premiered in April 2023.