As we end our broadcast today,
I have a personal note that I would like to
share with you.
I want to start by doing this and asking you
a big favor.
Just take a second to recall the names of eight
women who you love and know in your life.
Just 8. Count them on your fingers.
Statistically, one of them will get or have breast cancer.
I am that one in eight in my friend group.
I have never been sick a day of my life.
I don't smoke. I rarely drink.
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.
I am in my second month of chemo treatments and
will do radiation and a double mastectomy.
Stage 3 is not a death sentence anymore for the
vast majority of women,
but here is the reality that.
Really shocked my system when I started to research more.
About breast cancer, something I never knew before this diagnosis.
If you happen to be a black woman,
you are 41% more likely to die from breast cancer
than your white counterparts.
41% so to all my sisters,
black and white and brown out there.
Please, for the love of God,
get your mammograms every single year.
Do yourself exams, Try to catch it.
Before I did. Now here's something I could never,
ever have predicted would happen to me.
I have thanked cancer for choosing me.
I'm learning that no matter what hell we go through
in life.
That I am still madly in love with this life.
And just being alive feels really different for me.
Now I am happier because I don't stress about foolish
little things that used to annoy me.
And now, every single day that I breathe another breath,
I can celebrate that I am still here with you.
I am here with my Co anchors,
my colleagues, my family and I can love and cry
and laugh and hope.
And that, my dear friends,
is enough.