A TV correspondent who initially resisted undergoing an on-air mammogram is now grateful she did — because it may have saved her life.
Amy Robach, 40, a reporter for ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” found out she has breast cancer and will undergo a double mastectomy on Thursday, she revealed on the show Monday.
“I’ve decided to be very aggressive,” Robach told Robin Roberts, herself a cancer survivor, on the show.
Robach agreed to the routine mammogram Oct. 1 after her bosses and colleagues on “Good Morning America” urged her to get tested — if only to inspire others to have the lifesaving procedure.
Robach wasn’t eager to undergo the medical screening until her bosses pointed out that she was “the age women should start getting mammograms,” she wrote on ABC News’ website Monday.
“Between flying all over the world for work, and running around with my kids to school and ballet and gymnastics like so many women, I just kept putting it off,” she told Roberts.
Now, she has caught the cancer early and is prepared to fight the disease full-force and have the double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery.
“Only then will I know more about what that fight will fully entail, but I am mentally and physically as prepared as anyone can be in this situation,” she wrote.
Robach, who joined ABC last year from NBC, told Roberts, her friend and colleague, she was grateful
co-workers had pushed her to go through with the assignment to promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
“Thank God you did,” Robach told the news anchor. “I had cancer the whole time we were sitting in that office, and I said, ‘I don’t have any connection to that disease.’ “
Robach said she never thought it could be possible that she would be diagnosed with the disease after maintaining an active, healthy lifestyle and having no family history of the illness.
“I would have considered it virtually impossible that I would have cancer,” wrote the wife and mother.
But a checkup weeks later quickly led to a “tornado of tests,” indicating that Robach’s battle against the illness was just beginning.
She will take a leave of absence for an undetermined period, an ABC spokesman said.
After she received her life-altering diagnosis, Robach’s family — including her husband, “Melrose Place” actor Andrew Shue, who was on a business trip at the time — flew back to New York to be by her side.
The reporter and her husband are parents to five children — Robach has two daughters from a previous marriage, while Shue, 43, has three sons.
There are still many frightening unknowns about Robach’s particular diagnosis.
“There’s a lot you don’t know until you have the surgery,” she said on-air Monday.
“I don’t know about chemo. I don’t know what stage I am. I don’t know if it has spread. So we’ll find out those things in the weeks to come.”
After putting off the routine screening for a year, Robach said the knowledge has only empowered her to fight the illness — and she hopes her story will prompt others to get checked.
She expressed her thanks via Twitter. “Gratitude . . . For all who have written, tweeted, called, kept me in their prayers. Spread the word, save lives.”
