CNN‘s Sara Sidner, who first revealed a stage 3 breast cancer diagnoses two years ago and has occasionally provided updates with her audience since, is now sharing a harrowing experience that had the anchor struggling through “15 days of torture” under the mistaken notion that her cancer had advanced to an incurable stage 4.
Directly addressing viewers during her CNN News Central segment Friday, a somber Sidner began, “I want to share this update with you, about me. During these past few weeks i thought that cancer had spread all over my body.” She then went on to describe how a recent PET scan “lit up like a Christmas tree.”
“It indicated I was likely metastatic,” she continued. “Stage 4 cancer, incurable. It appeared to have spread to my hip, my spine, my liver, my lungs. I was inconsolable at the time. I immediately, as one does, looked up how long do I have to live. The number came back: Less than five years. That is the median overall survival time for stage 4 breast cancer.”
Sidner was, understandably, gobsmacked. “It knocked the breath out of me, as you might imagine,” she said. “Then I cried. My husband cried with me. My mother was stunned and scared, but surprisingly hopeful, bless her.”
The PET scan was followed by a biopsy in which doctors, Sidner said, “stick needles in a few areas to try to get a sample of your body to test it. Fifteen days of torture later, waiting for results, they came back.”
She received the good news – the biopsy results were negative – via email while she was in the CNN studio.
“Like a moth to a flame,” she said, “I had to open it. ‘Negative,’ it said. I uncharacteristically grabbed [co-anchor] John Berman’s hand in the cubby hole where we work side by side. ‘Negative,’ I croaked. A lump of tears was in my throat.”
Sidner said that her doctor explained that “biopsy beats scan” in diagnosing cancer. “I had a deep, guttural sigh of relief,” she said, adding that a molecular cancer blood test confirmed the negative result.
Sidner also shared the advice given to her by co-anchor Berman after she told him the good news. Saying she shouldn’t “do what you always do, which is to look for the next worst thing that’s gonna happen down the road,” Berman told Sidner: “Just celebrate the win.”
