Former MTV Star Reveals Stage 4 Cancer Diagnosis: ‘A Little Angry’

Four years after publicly announcing she was battling breast cancer, former MTV VJ Ananda Lewis says her cancer has spread to other parts of her body, resulting in a stage 4 diagnosis. Lewis, who was a fixture on BET and MTV in the late 1990s and early 2000s including hosting MTV Live, shared her difficult news during a CNN roundtable discussion on October 15, 2024.

Lewis, 51, and CNN anchor Sara Sidner, 52, who announced her own breast cancer journey in the fall of 2023, per People, joined their close friend, CNN correspondent Stephanie Elam, for an intimate discussion about their diagnoses and their very different strategies for combatting the disease.

While Sidner followed a traditional course of treatment, Lewis said on the nearly 40-minute special that she opted for a more holistic approach, choosing not to have surgery in favor of trying to shrink her tumor with homeopathic remedies combined with medication and radiation.

Six years after Lewis first found a lump in her breast, Elam reported, she is now battling metastatic breast cancer. Though stage 4 is typically incurable, treatments are available to extend a patient’s life by months or years, according to the American Cancer Society.

“I was just like, ‘Fudge man, I really thought I had this,'” Lewis said of learning her cancer had spread. “I was frustrated. I was a little angry at myself.”

---

Ananda Lewis Says Cancer Invaded Her Lymph System After She Decided to ‘Keep My Tumor’

Lewis was first diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in early 2019, she said during the CNN roundtable, but did not follow her doctors’ recommendation to have a double mastectomy.

“My plan at first was to get out excessive toxins in my body,” she said. “I felt like my body is intelligent, I know that to be true. Our bodies are brilliantly made.”

Rather than having surgery, Lewis explained, “I decided to keep my tumor and try to work it out of my body a different way. Looking back on that, I go, ‘You know what? Maybe I should have.'”

Though Lewis said she felt her wellness strategy was working for a while, she told Sidner and Elam that she took her “foot off the gas” and the cancer spread to her lymph nodes.

“My lymph system really flared up,” she said. “And so, all through my abdomen, all those lymphs were very flared up, my collar bone.”

When she learned her cancer had progressed to stage 4, Lewis couldn’t get out of bed for eight weeks, she told Sidner and Elam, admitting that it “was the first time I ever had a conversation with death because I felt like, ‘This is how it ends.'”

Lewis recalled, “I said, ‘Man, listen. I know you’re coming for me at some point. But I don’t want it to be now. And if you could just wait, I promise when you do come, I’m gonna make it fun for you.”

---

Ananda Lewis & Sara Sidner Hope Their Stories Inspire More Women to Get Their Mammograms

Though Lewis realizes her holistic plan didn’t eradicate her cancer, she still sees value in her path, telling Sidner and Elam that “quality of life was very important” in her decision-making.

“There’s certain things I know I’m not gonna be OK with, and I know myself,” she said. “I want to want to be here, and so, I had to do it a certain way, for me.”

However, she now hopes her story will inspire other women to get their mammograms. In October 2020, when she first told her followers via Instagram that she had been fighting breast cancer for nearly two years, she admitted she’d avoided getting a mammogram for years.

“For a really long time, I have refused mammograms and that was a mistake,” she said in the video she posted, explaining that she thought that her mother’s breast cancer was caused by radiation from the mammograms she underwent for decades.

Realizing she could have caught her own breast cancer much earlier if she’d had mammograms, she captioned her post, “This is tough for me, but if just ONE woman decides to get her mammogram after watching this, what I’m going through will be worth it. 🌸PRACTICE EARLY DETECTION🌸 Share this with a woman you love. These 6 minutes could help save her life.”

Sidner, meanwhile, just got word that her grueling treatment plan was successful. After five months of chemo, Sidner revealed on CNN in May that she would soon undergo a double mastectomy, which was followed by 25 rounds of radiation.

On October 10, Entertainment Tonight filmed Sidner celebrating her final treatment and ringing the victory bell at her oncology center. She also shared a video of her radiation burns on Instagram, hoping to educate people on what happens to the body during treatment.

Sidner, too, said she hopes her story inspires women to advocate for themselves and not wait to get anything abnormal checked.

“If you notice any change in your breast, anything, and you’re worried about it,” she told ET, “don’t listen to yourself saying, ‘Oh, it’s probably nothing.’ Because I did that. Just go to your doctor. Ask for a mammogram.”

The National Breast Cancer Foundation offers a free guide to when, where, and how to schedule a mammogram, including how to handle any stumbling blocks.

0 Comments