MTV’s Ananda Lewis shares breast cancer regrets: ‘Important for me to admit’ mistakes
After being diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer, former MTV VJ Ananda Lewis opted out of undergoing a double mastectomy, a surgery recommended by her doctors.
Now, Lewis is updating her fans on her health, revealing that five years later her cancer has progressed to Stage 4, Today reports.
On Oct. 15, Lewis joined a CNN roundtable to talk about her diagnosis. She admitted regret for how she handled her original diagnosis in 2019.
“I decided to keep my tumor and try to work it out of my body a different way,” Lewis told her friend, CNN correspondent Stephanie Elam. “Looking back on that I go, ‘Girl, maybe I should’ve (had the surgery).’”
Lewis said her decision at that time came from not feeling like she had good options when it came to breast cancer treatment.
“They wanted to take both (breasts),” she told CNN. “They wanted to do all these big things that I was not ready for.”
Alternatively, Lewis moved forward with chemotherapy treatments and alternative methods, such as improving her mental health, getting more sleep and drinking less alcohol.
At the end of every month, Lewis would monitor the cancer’s grow with ultrasounds.
It was during the pandemic that she was told the cancer was spreading. And it continued to spread despite undergoing a type of targeted chemotherapy.
In October 2023, a “scan showed that I had this kind of up my spine, through my hip, almost everywhere but my brain,” Lewis said. “I’ve never been in pain like that in my life.”
“I don’t get afraid of things,” Lewis continued. “I was just like, ‘Fudge, man, I really thought I had this.’ I was frustrated. I was a little angry at myself.”
In an Oct. 16 interview with The New York Times, Lewis explained that she is now no longer a candidate for surgery or chemotherapy.
She explained that she’s now taking a drug that treats metastatic cancer.
“Those medications are working beautifully for me in combination with the other things I’m doing that help support my body,” she told the Times. “I’m really thriving right now.”
She added that some of the tumors have shrunk so much that they are “almost undetectable.”
According to Today, Lewis also shared some regret back in 2020, when she revealed she would forego her yearly mammogram screenings due to fear of radiation.
In her statement then, she told her social media followers she was exposed to far more radiation during treatment than she would have been through mammograms.
“I wish I could go back,” she said in the emotional video, the Times reported. “It’s important for me to admit where I went wrong with this.”
As the National Breast Cancer Foundation reports, those diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer have a 5-year relative survival rate of 86%.
Stage 4 breast cancer, which metastasizes throughout a person’s body, is considered incurable, but is treatable. The survival rate for Stage 4 breast cancer in women is 31%.
