‘I’m just so very lucky’

After revealing that she’d been diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2021, Christiane Amanpour is managing the disease for a third time.

The CNN news anchor revealed her latest diagnosis during an appearance on the Changing the Ovarian Cancer Story podcast from the World Ovarian Cancer Coalition on Thursday. Amanpour appeared alongside consultant Dr. Angela George, an oncologist in gynecology who guided her through her diagnosis and treatment from the Royal Marsden, a world-leading cancer treatment hospital in London.

“I have it again, but it’s being very well-managed, and this is one of the whole things that people have to understand about some cancers,” Amanpour told host Hannah Vaughan Jones.

The international journalist recalled sharing her first diagnosis with the world, noting that she broke the news publicly because people were asking where she was after being off the air for a month.

“I decided when I got back in front of the camera after four weeks — which included the surgery and a couple of weeks of recuperation before I started chemotherapy — I decided to say something because I actually wanted to do a service,” Amanpour explained, adding, “Not just to my viewers, but also to those who might be in a similar situation. And I wanted to say what had happened to me. And I wanted to say listen to your body because part of the reason I got such quick care was because I listened to my body and went straight to the doctors.”

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George told Jones that by the time most women get diagnosed, they will “have often been going back and forth to the GP for sometimes a year or so with abdominal symptoms and it often gets misdiagnosed as reflux or indigestion, urinary tract infections.”

“Most women, by the time they get a diagnosis, might have had the cancer for three or four years before it actually gets diagnosed,” George added. “And that’s why most of the women that we see are actually diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer, because it doesn’t have a lot of specific symptoms that people can pick up on and it does tend to be misdiagnosed for quite a long time.”

Amanpour shared that her situation is different since she has a “fairly rare” kind of ovarian cancer, which was diagnosed as “stage 1/2,” as her cancer was in its first stage but had “adhered to my pelvis.”

“Angela told me what it was and why I was potentially lucky because there were actually pain symptoms,” the journalist added. “There’s often no symptoms so many women don’t know, so I feel that I was lucky.”

When Amanpour announced her first diagnosis in May 2021, she had major surgery 10 days later, followed by 18 weeks of chemotherapy. She was back to reporting in the field within six months after completing chemotherapy, a feat she credits to her community, including her 25-year-old son Darius John, whom she shares with her ex-husband, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Rubin.

“I’ve never actually asked for help before. And when I did, I got it,” Amanpour told Jones, tearing up as she spoke. “[From] my family, from my friends, from my colleagues, from everybody. And it was really, well, it was touching, but it was really helpful, really amazing.”

She added that the encouragement from her loved ones “sustained” her when it felt like her cancer was also affecting her state of mind. “To have all these people who just literally every day were asking me how I was, how they could help, visiting and giving me things… the community is actually vital,” she emphasized. “Absolutely vital. And I’m just so very lucky that I had that.”

“I got a lot of support from all over the world, and it was really incredibly helpful for me,” Amanpour added. “Absolutely.”

Watch Amanpour’s appearance on the Changing the Ovarian Cancer Story podcast above.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly