CNN anchor Sara Sidner had some tough personal news to share on CNN News Central on Monday morning. The co-host disclosed that she has stage 3 breast cancer and is in her second month of chemotherapy. "I have never been sick a day of my life. I don't smoke, I rarely drink," the 51-year-old said. "Breast cancer does not run in my family. And yet, here I am with stage 3 breast cancer. It is hard to say out loud." CBS News reports that Sidner, who will undergo a double mastectomy, took an optimistic tone, saying the disease at this stage "is not a death sentence anymore for most women."
Sidner, CNN's senior national correspondent, tells People that she was told just before she traveled to Israel in October to report on the war with Hamas that a mammogram had raised cause for concern. "Seeing the kind of suffering going on where I was and seeing people still live through the worst thing that has ever happened to them with grace and kindness, I was blown away by their resilience," she says. Sidler says that after a biopsy confirmed she had cancer when she returned to the US after three weeks, she initially felt helpless, but made up her mind to do everything she could to survive.
"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," Sidler tells People. In Monday's broadcast, Sidner said one in eight women will get breast cancer—and Black women are 41% more likely to die from the disease than their white counterparts. "To all my sisters, Black, White, and brown: Please, for the love of God, do your checks yourself," she said. "Don't play with this, just please try to catch it before I did." (More breast cancer stories.)
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