CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour revealed on Thursday (Oct 23) that her battle against ovarian cancer is back on after the disease returned for a third time.
The 67-year-old British-Iranian journalist shared the health update during an appearance alongside her medical consultant Dr Angela George on the Changing the Ovarian Cancer Story podcast.
“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,” she told host Hannah Vaughan Jones. “I obviously had all of the relevant organs removed, but it came back a couple times in a lymph node.”
Her latest medical revelation comes four years after she first went public with the diagnosis and underwent major surgery, followed by nearly five months of chemotherapy.
George, who has guided Amanpour through her diagnosis and treatment at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital – known for its world-leading cancer treatment – shared that her patient has a rare type of ovarian cancer that makes up less than 10% of cases.
It’s unusual nature likely led to Amanpour getting a diagnosis sooner than she would have otherwise.
“Angela told me what it was and why I was potentially lucky because there were actually pain symptoms,” the award-winning journalist explained. “There’s often no symptoms so many women don’t know, so I feel that I was lucky.”
The oncologist noted that most women with ovarian cancer get diagnosed too late because their abdominal symptoms often get misdiagnosed as reflux, indigestion or a urinary tract infection.
“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 said.
“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 is now undergoing immunotherapy, which she described as having no side effects and being “the opposite of gruelling.” She takes pills each day and gets infusions in the hospital every six weeks.
Amanpour said that her cancer was detected the second and third times due to her routine check-ups every three months.
“The fact that I’m monitored all the time is a superb insurance policy,” she said, encouraging others to listen to their bodies and get regular screenings. –New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
