CNN host Sara Sidner can finally breathe again.
Fifteen days after a scan revealing Stage 4 breast cancer, Sidner received the results of her subsequent biopsy. She opened the email in the CNN studio.
“‘Not malignant,’ it said,” Sidner said on her show, CNN News Central, August 7. “‘Not malignant.’ What does that mean? It means not cancer. Again, shock, because the scan suggested otherwise. The doctor then made very clear: Biopsy beats scan. I had a deep, guttural sigh of relief.”
Sidner has spoken publicly about her battle with cancer over the years. A mammogram in 2023 yielded a Stage 3 breast cancer diagnosis, leading to a double mastectomy, radiation, and 15 rounds of chemotherapy. She has since said that the diagnosis made her grateful for “the small things” that “make up life.”
Sidner shared the update on CNN News Central.
“I wanted to share this update with you, about me,” she began. “During these past few weeks, I thought that cancer had spread all over my body. A PET scan, which shows how your organs and tissues function at a cellular level, well, it lit up like a Christmas tree. It indicated I was likely metastatic, Stage 4 cancer, incurable. It appeared to have spread to my hip, my spine, my liver, my lungs. I was inconsolable at the time. I immediately, as one does, looked up, ‘How long do I have to live?’ The number came back: less than five years.”
“It knocked the breath out of me, as you might imagine,” she continued. “Then I cried. My husband cried with me. My mother was stunned and scared, but surprisingly hopeful, bless her.”
After the scan came the biopsy, where “doctors stick needles in a few areas to try to get a sample of your body to test it,” she said. “Fifteen days of torture later, waiting for results, they came back.”
A blood test confirmed the negative results. Sidner explained the tests are “incredibly new.” Like her biopsy results, she received her blood test results in an email in the studio.
“Like a moth to a flame, I had to open it,” she said. “‘Negative,’ it said. I uncharacteristically grabbed [co-anchor] John Berman’s hand in the cubby hole where we work side by side. ‘Negative,’ I croaked. A lump of tears was in my throat.”
Berman was confused at first because Sindler hadn’t told him about the scare. He told her to “just celebrate the win,” Sidner said. “Don’t do what you always do, which is look for the next worst thing that’s gonna happen down the road.”
Sidner said her earlier cancer diagnosis and treatment gave her perspective.
“If my world is only about me, it makes me spiteful and nitpicky,” she told People in April. “Other people are suffering. It’s important to realize, ‘Girl, what you’re dealing with is small. You’re still able to live.’”
