"If you get your mammogram early and you stay on top of the mammograms, then you catch the cancer when it's very small and your options are so much better, your outcomes are so much better,” Ali Meyer said.
After a TV anchor in Oklahoma City found out she had breast cancer while streaming live on social media, she is updating her followers one year after the life-changing procedure.
Ali Meyer, 40, decided to broadcast her very first mammogram to raise awareness about the disease during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. What she thought was a simple routine procedure turned out to have some life-changing news.
After she finished livestreaming the mammogram, doctors told her they needed to do more tests because something they saw concerned them.
A follow-up biopsy concluded she had ductal carcinoma, a non-invasive breast cancer.
"This has been hard and shocking, it does kind of rock you to your core,” she said in a video posted after the diagnosis.
Meyer remembered breaking the news to colleagues at KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City.
"It was traumatic, I remember walking through the newsroom and walking into my news director's office and I could barely get out the words. I just said I have breast cancer,” she emotionally told Inside Edition.
She also worries she could pass the cancer gene to her four young daughters.
"That was the part that was really, really hard to digest for me,” she added.
She decided to document her journey online so other women facing breast cancer would know they are not alone.
Meyer underwent a mastectomy along with reconstruction surgery. She was out three weeks before returning to the anchor desk.
Now, one year later, she has gone back for another mammogram and she is cancer free.
"One year is kind of a big mark when it comes to cancer milestones so yeah I’m feeling really good,” she said.
Meyer says she hopes live streaming her breast cancer story will encourage other women to get checked because it could save your life.
"If you get your mammogram early and you stay on top of the mammograms, then you catch the cancer when it's very small and your options are so much better, your outcomes are so much better,” she added.
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