Hannah Storm has revealed that she recently battled breast cancer.
While appearing on Good Morning America on Tuesday (March 19), the 61-year-old co-anchor of ESPN’s SportsCenter said that she received her diagnosis in January after she went for her yearly mammogram in November 2023.
Keep reading to find out more…“I kind of didn’t hear anything at first, and I thought that was a little odd,” Hannah recalled. “Usually, you hear right away, ‘Everything’s fine.’”
After getting in contact with the place where she had her mammogram done, Hannah was told that she needed to get an ultrasound because she had “dense breasts.” She was already familiar with the imaging test because she’d done it before.
“[I] have my ultrasound in early January and they come back right away this time and they say, ‘You know, we’re seeing something. We don’t think it’s anything. It’s probably nothing at all, but we’d like you to have a biopsy,’” Hannah explained. “So I’m back a week later for a biopsy, and [the] call came less than 24 hours later. The doctor said, ‘I’m so surprised, but you have ductal carcinoma in situ. You have DCIS, the earliest form of breast cancer.’”
Hannah said she was “shocked” by the diagnosis since she had gone regularly for mammograms.
“I had no risk factors. I have no breast cancer in my family. I did not have a lump. I did not have pain. I don’t have any genetic predisposition to breast cancer,” Hannah said. “And what I came to learn is the vast majority of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer, don’t have risk factors, and so, I gotta say, I was shocked, scared.”
Since her cancer was still in the early stages, Hannah was able to have a lumpectomy, which is a surgical procedure that removes the cancer or other abnormal tissue from the breast.
“The surgery was successful. I was able to go back to work, cover the Super Bowl, which was a real blessing,” Hannah said, adding that because of new tests, she didn’t have to undergo radiation.
“I’m also taking a drug called tamoxifen that blocks all the estrogen and progesterone, which apparently, my cells feed off of that,” Hannah said. “I’m taking this for the next three years.”
Hannah, who is now cancer-free, said that she decided to publicly tell her story to encourage women to get their yearly mammograms.
“This is how you find it. You find it through getting your yearly mammograms. This is how you find out that you have breast cancer,” Hannah emphasized. “And if you find out that you have it in the earliest form, it’s so treatable. There’s so much that you can do about it.”
News of Hannah‘s breast cancer diagnosis comes less than a week after Olivia Munn revealed her own diagnosis.