Former “Boy Meets World” star Danielle Fishel shared that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer while reminding women to undergo regular checkups that can catch the disease early.
Fishel, 43, said on the Aug. 19 episode of her iHeartRadio podcast “Pod Meets World” that she has been diagnosed with DCIS, which stands for ductal carcinoma in situ, a form of breast cancer.
“It’s very, very, very early,” she said. “It’s technically stage 0.”
She added that her official diagnosis is high-grade DCIS with micro-invasion.
“I’m going to be fine,” she said. “I’m having surgery to remove it. I’m going to be on some follow-up treatment.”
About one in five new breast cancers are DCIS, which has a 98% survival rate after 10 years, usually after removing the tumor, according to the American Cancer Society.
The mother of two had a specific motive for sharing her diagnosis publicly.
“The only reason I caught this cancer when it is still stage 0 is because the day I got my text message that my yearly mammogram came up, I made the appointment,” she said.
“They found it so, so, so early that I’m going to be fine,” she continued. “So, I want to share this because I hope that it will encourage anyone to get in there. If it’s time for your appointment, if you’ve never had an appointment before, get in there. If you have to find out that you have cancer, find out when it’s at stage 0, if possible.”
The United States Preventive Services Task Force recommended in April that women with an average risk for breast cancer should now get a mammogram every other year starting at age 40 instead of 50. However some doctors believe that mammograms should take place annually for women in their 40s, rather than every other year.
“You can miss aggressive breast cancers (because they) grow quickly,” Dr. Elisa Port, chief of breast surgery for New York’s Mount Sinai Health System and director of the Dubin Breast Center, told TODAY.com.
Data from the National Cancer Institute show the number of invasive breast cancer diagnoses among women in their 40s has been increasing by 2% every year since around 2016.
Fishel, who played Topanga Lawrence on “Boy Meets World” from 1993 to 2000, wrestled with the decision to share her diagnosis outside of a tight circle of family and friends.
“The only reason I’m sharing it is because if you’ve ever had those thoughts in your life where someone close to you is diagnosed with cancer, somewhere in your mind you think, ‘What would I do if this were me? What would I do in this situation?'” she said.
“And for some reason I had always thought I would suffer in silence. I would not tell anyone. I would tell only my small, small group and then I would just suck it up and then when I’m on the other side of it, then I would tell people.”
The writings of author Glennon Doyle inspired Fishel to be open about having breast cancer from the beginning, rather than just “the pretty picture of it all” after she is done with treatment.
“The place you have the most to learn from is at the very beginning of a story, or in the very messy middle of a story,” Fishel said.
She is currently meeting with an array of specialists to formulate a treatment plan.
“I have some big decisions ahead of me about what I want to do for treatment,” she said. “I don’t have all the answers yet.”
Fishel said there’s also the “possibility we may have to put some things on hold” as far as her appearances on the podcast and her work as an actor, director and businesswoman.
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