Good Morning America reporter, Amy Robach will have a double mastectomy following breast cancer diagnosis after getting a mammogram on live television for an assignment.
Initially, Robach resisted doing the live mammogram, but in the end the procedure possibly saved her life.
On Monday, during GMA Amy Robach, 40, announced that she will undergo a double mastectomy on Thursday.
“I’ve decided to be very aggressive,” Robach told Robin Roberts, who is herself a cancer survivor.
On October 1, the reporter was finally convinced to do a live mammogram to bring awareness to the deadly disease in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Amy Robach said on a post on the ABC website, that her bosses suggested she undergo the mammogram on the first of last month, after pointing out she was “the age women should start getting mammograms.”
She told Roberts that she had put off the screening because of her demanding job, which requires her to travel all over the world and her kids ballet, gymnastics and hectic schedule.
Like any other mom of young children, Amy Robach was too busy with life to get the important mammogram.
Now, after being diagnosed with the potentially deadly disease, she is ready to fight it head on and get a double mastectomy, an extreme step, but for many younger women the only sure way to make sure the cancer doesn’t return.
“Only then will I know more about what that fight will fully entail, but I am mentally and physically as prepared as anyone can be in this situation,” Robach wrote.
The 40-year-old will undergo reconstructive surgery after the double mastectomy.
Amy Robach joined ABC from the Today Show weekend edition on NBC , last year and says she is grateful to her colleagues and bosses for making her go through with the mammogram.
“Thank God you did,” Robach told the Robin Roberts. “I had cancer the whole time we were sitting in that office, and I said, ‘I don’t have any connection to that disease.’”
Robach says she found it almost impossible to believe she would ever get diagnosed with cancer, since she leads a healthy lifestyle and has not family history of breast cancer.
Even though she has decided to fight the disease head on and have the drastic procedure that will remove her breasts, there are still a lot of unknowns, she won’t find out until after the surgery.
“I don’t know about chemo. I don’t know what stage I am. I don’t know if it has spread. So we’ll find out those things in the weeks to come.”
Amy Robach is married to Melrose Place star Andrew Shue and they have five children from previous marriages together.
The ABC reporter took to Twitter to thank well wishers for their messages of support:
Gratitude..For all who have written, tweeted, called, kept me in their prayers. Spread the word, save lives. http://t.co/rrw0NYljLj
— Amy Robach (@arobach) November 11, 2013
We wish Amy Robach all the best in her surgery and recovery.
[Image via Rena Schild / Shutterstock.com]