Samantha Harris is “cancer-free”, eight months after being diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time.
Samantha Harris is “cancer-free”.
The former ‘Dancing with the Stars’ host announced last August she had been diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time but she is now “feeling great” and has been getting “back to business as usual” with husband Michael Hess and their daughters Josselyn, 17,and 14-year-old Hillary.
She told People magazine: “I’m feeling great … I think of myself as cancer-free…
“The goal now is to make sure that my body is not a host for any circulating tumor cells to decide to settle on a host organ…
“You want to get back to normal or whatever the new normal is. And so if this could be a blip on the radar of our daughters’ memories, that would make me very happy.”
However, the 51-year-old presenter – who first battled the disease in 2014 – had a “setback” following reconstructive surgery in November, which came when she got up to go for a walk after her 10-day stint of bed rest.
She said: “For most people, that would mean just go walk down the block to the end of your street and come back.
“I went for two days in a row of [about] an hour of walking, thinking that I was walking at a slow pace — but for me, that’s still an incredibly fast pace.”
After the two days, Samantha noticed she was “red” and “inflamed” where she had had the operation.
She said: “I was immediately so concerned that I had basically undone all the goodness of the surgery and first 10 days of recovery and now was fearing that I had maybe either an infection or that my implant was being rejected.
“I wasn’t sure what was going on. So, the emotional roller coaster — took that deep dive again.”
But after another stint on bed rest, Samantha got back on the “regular six-week recovery schedule” and then joined her family on a celebratory holiday to Mexico because she has learned to cherish “experiences and time together.”
But despite the hurdle, after returning to bed rest for a while longer, Harris managed to get back on the “regular six week recovery schedule” which allowed for her to join her family on a celebratory trip to Mexico.
She said: “The one thing that I learned from my initial diagnosis was just how experiences and time together are ever more important than anything to me now in the entire world.
“Whether it’s time with friends, grabbing a girlfriend for a hike or a girl’s night, a date night with my husband, stealing away on a trip with him, or being able to have these family vacations so that we can create those memories because that’s what will last more than any possessions.”
Samantha Harris declares she is cancer-free
