This year alone, nearly 1.5 million people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer, according to Cancer.org statistics. The battle against the deadly disease rages on daily, and prevention and awareness is a major part of that effort. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and organizers are pulling out all stops to shed light on the issue, including seeking a little help from celebrity friends who have conquered it. These eight celebrity cancer survivors put a famous face to a non-discriminating disease and used their star-power to inspire others.
1. Christina Applegate
Christina Applegate rose to prominence playing the dumb blonde with the hot body in Married with Children. Though fans eventually moved past her looks to see her actual talent, she’s never stopped paying attention to her own body. In March 2008, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Thanks to the early detection, the Samantha Who? star is now cancer-free (she opted to have a double mastectomy to ensure the cancer couldn’t return). Applegate is an active advocate for early screenings, founding “Right Action for Women,” an organization that helps pay for tests for high-risk young women who can’t afford MRIs.
“I became really passionate about people who are at high risk having the same opportunity to get this sort of testing,” Applegate told Women’s Health magazine this month. “Some insurance companies consider the tests exploratory, which is just ridiculous. I mean, it saved my life!”
2. Sheryl Crow
When Sheryl Crow was diagnosed in early 2006 with breast cancer, she had just come off a break-up with fellow cancer survivor Lance Armstrong.
“It was a really personal blow, because I was newly out of a relationship and that made it more difficult to even fathom that I could be diagnosed with cancer,” Crow told Health Magazine this month.
The singer underwent radiation therapy and hasn’t had an issue since, crediting her attitude as a contributing part to her healing process. “This great friend told me one of the gateways to awakening is to allow yourself to experience your emotions,” she said. “As Westerners, we’ve gotten adept at suppressing them. It’s always ‘Try not to think about it’ or ‘Keep yourself busy.’ You push all that stuff down, and it manifests itself in other ways—whether it’s stress or disease. So my attitude was to grieve when I felt like grieving, be afraid when I felt like being afraid, and be angry when I felt like being angry.”
3. Lance Armstrong
Lance Armstrong was only twenty-five years old when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, which was so severe it had spread to his lungs, abdomen, and brain. He had just won the World Cycling Championships and had become the first cyclist to clock the widest winning margin in the history of the U.S. National Road Race Championship. But from October to December 1996, he underwent serious chemotherapy treatment and two surgeries. Doctors told him he had a 50 percent chance of survival.
“They thought it was a tough case, 50/50, coin flip. I don’t want to do it again,” he said in 2007. “I looked at it as if it was a race, a competition, so it was me versus him or her or it, being the disease, and I absolutely hated him/her/it, so when the blood work came back that I was getting better, then I felt like, ‘Well, I’m winning. The scoreboard says I’m winning’ … I really viewed it as a fight.”
It was a fight Armstrong ultimately won, shaking the disease and eventually going on to win the Tour de France for an unparalleled seven years in a row.
4. Melissa Etheridge
In 2005, Melissa Etheridge was on the mend from her chemotherapy treatments (she was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2004) when she took to the stage at the Grammys that year. Rocking a bald head while belting out Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart,” she turned her performance into a national statement on cancer survival.
