5. Tom Green
At the time of his diagnosis, Tom Green was at the height of his comedic career. He had his popular MTV program, The Tom Green Show, and a serious relationship with actress, Drew Barrymore. But in March 2000, Green found out that he had testicular cancer, one of the most common tumors found in men ages fifteen to thirty-five, according to the Urological Sciences Research Foundation.
In his endless quest to find the funny in everything, Green decided to do a cancer special entitled The Tom Green Cancer Special. The show intermingled sage advice and tips with sketches and songs and was listed as one of Time Magazine’s Top Ten TV programs. Green has since made a full recovery.
6. Kylie Minogue
Fans were shocked by Kylie Minogue’s announcement that she would be cancelling the Australian leg of her 2005 “Showgirl” tour to undergo immediate treatment for breast cancer. She faced an eighteen-month battle and came back as a survivor.
“A great part of my coping mechanism was this goal of getting back on stage. I’m not finished. I may have just started to hit my stride,” she told ABC News in 2008. “People tell you, ‘Everything will go back to normal.’ Really? It’s almost insensitive to say that. You move on to a ‘new normal.’ In that small phrase, you’re reassured that there will be some kind of normality, but there’s acknowledgment that you’ve been through something that will change you.”
7. Sharon Osbourne
Though breast cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer to afflict women, Sharon Osbourne found herself wrestling with a different disease. In July 2002, Osbourne was diagnosed with colon cancer, and she let cameras document her fight against it during the second season of her family’s MTV reality show The Osbournes. Early detection led to a quick recovery, but the experience altered her outlook on life.
“To experience cancer made me re-evaluate my life, myself as a person, things I thought were important in life. I realized I was being very shallow and selfish,” she said in Coping with Cancer magazine in 2007. “Career-wise, it made me realize I could do things I thought I couldn’t do. And if I failed, it really wasn’t that important because my career is not of great importance. It’s a gift, not a priority in my life.”
