Beloved News Anchor, 66, Kept Breast Cancer Diagnosis Private: ‘It’s Not Who I Am, It’s What I’m Living With’

Speaking to the show’s co-hosts Ed Balls and Kate Garraway, Goddard explained, “I was grappling with how to deal with it myself. Plus I just wanted to work and be me.

“With CNN and my colleagues there, they didn’t know that I had no hair, that I had no feeling in my legs from the treatment because I had chemo every week for four and a half months.”

She added, “And I was telling you that story about one of my colleagues, name drop, Don Lemon at CNN. He was very sweet and we were on air, and he went (pointing to her nose), ‘Nose, nose, nose’ because of chemo you get these nose bleeds and so I quickly wiped it up.

“I said to my husband afterward, ‘I’m mortified, Don saw me have this nosebleed.'”

As for why she didn’t want to be in the spotlight, on the covers of news stories, representing cancer, she added, “It’s not who I am, it’s what I’m living with.”

The mom of two continued, “And coming back to people with chronic illnesses, I think we do them a disservice when we use words like ‘brave,’ ‘champion,’ ‘hero,’ ‘’survivor,’ because they just want to grasp the life they have and drink life unto the lees [fullest].

“And I don’t want everything to be ‘Oh, you look so good,’ in brackets ‘considering you’ve got cancer.'”

‘They didn’t know that I had no hair, that I had no feeling in my legs.’

Trisha Goddard talks about living with breast cancer and why she kept her diagnosis a secret for so long. pic.twitter.com/GHbKnAywqu

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) August 8, 2024

Goddard, who rose to fame as the first Black British female news host to have her own show in the U.K., also noted that she decided not to hide her diagnosis when she was on her honeymoon with Allen, her fourth husband, whom she married in August 2022.

She said her treatment began the morning after her wedding and it delayed the start of her honeymoon, which she went on this year in the Bahamas.

Goddard added, “I’m one of those people who doesn’t do sea and fishes and water and that, and I went scuba diving. I thought, what the hell, what have you got to be frightened of?”

She also opened up to Hello Magazine earlier this year, saying, “My worry is that people will start seeing me as a frail little thing, and that if [the news] got out, I’d be judged, or people would change the way they are with me, or that I wouldn’t work.

“I’m a journalist; I don’t want to be ‘the story’. I don’t want to be interviewing someone and for them to say to me: ‘I’m so sorry.'”

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Tricia Goddard’s Breast Cancer Battle

Goddard was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 and she credits her husband at the time for helping her through treatment.

“When I was ill and going through treatment, he was so supportive,” she told Hello Magazine.

After completing treatment, she thought she was able to put the cancer behind her and move on with life. However, a little more than a year ago, Goddard said she started sustaining injuries while exercising at an increasing rate so that it caught her attention. Then, one day, she fell in her home, assuming she had possibly broken or fractured something on her leg. After undergoing tests and imaging scans, her doctor discovered something alarming: cancer cells in her hip.

It was then she learned the newly discovered cancer was a recurrence of the breast cancer she had dealt with many years earlier, except this time, it was in stage four.

“It’s not going to go away,” Goddard admitted. “And with that knowledge comes grief, and fear. But I must keep enjoying what I have always enjoyed.”

As for why she’s chosen to speak publicly about her diagnosis, she admitted, “I can’t lie; I can’t keep making up stories. It gets to a stage, after a year and a half, when keeping a secret becomes more of a burden than anything else.

“I’m nervous. But it needed to be done.”

Goddard was ultimately treated with several weeks of radiation and chemotherapy. She’s now focusing her efforts on “life-pro-longing care.”.

“When you go to the doctors in the (United) States, there’s a choice of three little boxes you tick for treatment of stage 4 cancer. One is cure, one is life-prolonging, and one is palliative. There’s that awful feeling when you’re sitting there thinking: ‘Which one?’ and mine is life-prolonging,” Goddard explained.

Sharing Your Cancer News

For many people, revealing the news of their diagnosis is a way of coping, and receiving needed support for a cancer journey. However, it’s certainly a highly personal decision that should be undertaken on an individual basis.

Some people may choose to keep their diagnosis to themselves or close loved ones, and that’s equally respectable.

Others might find the process of sharing the news to feel like a burden and opt for something a little more separated from telling people face to face, like sharing the news on a blog or in a social media post.

Deciding When and Who to Tell About My Diagnosis Became a Burden

Health is a deeply private matter, and it’s completely up to you, and you alone, to determine who has the right and privilege to know about your diagnosis.

For example, veteran NPR correspondent Ina Jaffe underscored this point in an essay she wrote a few years back.

“By the way, I have no issue with people who want to keep their cancer diagnosis a secret to the end. If you have the misfortune to have cancer, you get to have it any way you want,” wrote the NPR host.

RELATED: ‘I’ve Been Keeping a Secret’ Writes NPR’s Ina Jaffe of Her Advanced Breast Cancer Battle; Why Some Choose to Keep Their Battle Private

Jaffe opened up about her decision that keeping her cancer diagnosis a secret “served me well.” Doing so meant that she “didn’t have to explain myself to friends and strangers while I was still in the hysterical stage,” she wrote.

Dealing With Grief After a Cancer Diagnosis

How To Reduce the Risk Of A Breast Cancer Recurrence

While the chance of breast cancer recurrence varies based on the biology of the tumor, the stage it was when diagnosed and the treatment received, according to the Susan G. Komen organization, “Most people diagnosed with breast cancer will never have a recurrence.”  That’s the good news.

RELATED: Reducing Breast Cancer Recurrence Risk

“Once a patient has finished his or her active therapy for breast cancer, we will often refer to that time as breast cancer survivorship,” says Dr. Erica Mayer, a breast cancer medical oncologist at Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

“This is a time when patients are still being actively monitored by their treatment team, not only to ensure that they remain healthy and cancer-free in the years ahead, but also making sure that they have recovered from any side effects of their initial treatment, and that they are pursuing healthy behaviors for example, getting regular exercise, eating a healthy diet, and keeping up with all their other routine medical care.”

RELATED: Recommendations for a Healthy Lifestyle: One Doctor’s Advice for Cancer Survivors

However, recurrence does happen, so it’s important to do whatever you can to help reduce your risk. Some tips from SurvivorNet experts are: Follow treatment guidelines, maintain a healthy weight, limit alcohol consumption, eat a healthy diet, and exercise.

“The best way to reduce your risk of recurrence with breast cancer is to follow treatment guidelines and complete the course of treatment that’s given,” says Dr. Elisa Port, a surgical oncologist specializing in breast cancer at Mount Sinai, recently sat down with SurvivorNet and offered the following advice.

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As for staying healthy, Port explains, “We know that obesity or being overweight can increase the risk of cancer recurrence in breast cancer. And so I say, maintaining a healthy body weight, whatever that is for the individual… You know, we talk a lot about healthy body weight, and there’s a very big range of this, but there are certain numbers beyond which  it does affect one’s health. So we try to keep people within a range of a healthy body weight.”

Understanding Stage 4 (Metastatic) Breast Cancer

Stage 4, or metastatic breast cancer, means that the cancer has spread to distant areas of the body. Even though there is currently no cure for metastatic breast cancer, doctors have many options to treat this stage advanced stage of breast cancer.

Hormone therapy, chemotherapy and targeted drugs are all options to talk to her doctor about, depending on your individual needs. Sometimes surgery and/or radiation is considered as part of the treatment, but mainly it is important to focus on improving your quality of life.

The treatment plan for metastatic breast cancer patients depends on the specific needs of the woman, whether they need an aggressive chemotherapy or depending on the doctor’s assessment, they may benefit from another medication.

For hormone receptive positive cancer breast cancer patients, doctors try to see how long they can keep patients on oral therapies. Very often, newly diagnosed metastatic hormone receptive-positive breast cancers (where cells have either estrogen (ER) or progesterone (PR) receptors or both) respond best with different hormonal medications, and sometimes for many many years.

Treating Metastatic Breast Cancer

Dr. Erica Mayer, a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, says clinical trials have shown that hormone medicines are more effective when paired with targeted therapies. At some point, chemotherapy will be introduced. And according to Dr. Mayer, it’s delivered at a dose and schedule that’s as well-tolerated as possible.

“We are so lucky in breast cancer that we have so many effective and well-tolerated treatments,” Dr. Mayer tells SurvivorNet. I’m so gratified to see that patients are doing better and living longer today with metastatic breast cancer than they have ever done before.”

Bottom line, there are more and more options becoming available for patients to manage symptoms of advanced stage disease, and it’s best to talk about specific treatment plans and what is best for you with your own doctor.

Do You Have HER2-Positive Metastatic Breast Cancer? Here’s A Breakdown Of Some Of Your Treatment Options

Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff

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