During a Ellen DeGeneres show taping, Wanda Sykes made a shocking confession:
“I had breast cancer. Yeah, I know it’s scary.”
LIKE BlackDoctor.org on Facebook! Get Your Daily Medicine…For LIFE!
Sykes admitted that while lab work was being performed after her breast reduction in February 2011 (“I had real big boobs and I just got tired of knocking over stuff,” Sykes joked), doctors discovered she had DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ), a stage zero cancer, in her left breast.
The National Cancer Institute describes DCIS as a collection of abnormal cells inside the lining of a breast duct. “Many doctors don’t consider DCIS to be cancer,” according to this explainer, and some women would suffer no harm from it if left untreated. But in other cases, DCIS progresses and becomes invasive breast cancer – the dangerous kind. The problem is that there’s no way to predict which cases of DCIS are harmless and which will become life-threatening. However, experts agree that when caught at this early stage, the prognosis for women is “excellent.”
Wanda Sykes: “I Chose A Double Mastectomy” was originally published on blackdoctor.org
