Former Today show anchor Katie Couric announced Wednesday that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in June.
Couric was six months past her scheduled screening, which was untypical, according to the reporter’s blog post, and was reminded she needed a screening after a scheduled colonoscopy. Her first husband was diagnosed with colon cancer at 41 and died shortly after, and her current husband had a tumor the size of a coconut removed from his liver about eight years ago.
“If I had forgotten to schedule a mammogram, this might be a helpful reminder for other people, too,” Couric wrote.
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Couric filmed her mammogram with the intention of sharing it with her Katie Couric Media audience, similar to a colonoscopy segment she aired in 2000, two years after her first husband died of colon cancer. Scheduled colonoscopies increased by 20% after the show aired, according to Couric.
Doctors would eventually find a 2.5-centimeter-sized tumor in Couric’s breast. After determining that the chances of cancer returning were low, they treated Couric with surgery in July and subsequent radiation that finished earlier this month. The reporter was able to avoid chemotherapy throughout her treatment.
Some 85% of women diagnosed with breast cancer do not have it in their family history, like Couric. Roughly 264,000 American women are diagnosed with the cancer every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Couric credited the breast ultrasound with discovering the cancer in her self-proclaimed dense breast. She reported that 45% of women also have dense breasts, which makes it difficult for mammograms to detect cancer early on. Meanwhile, only 38 states require doctors to diagnose women with dense breasts, and Couric claims that only 14 states, plus Washington, D.C., require insurance companies to cover the cost of breast ultrasounds either fully or partially. However, DenseBreast-info.org says 16 states, as well as Washington, D.C., have laws requiring expanded insurance coverage for breast imaging.
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The Katie Couric website will spend the month of October reporting on issues surrounding breast cancer and already features a handful of informative articles on the topic.
