Watch: CNN anchor Sara Sidner discloses stage 3 breast cancer live on air

 

CNN news anchor Sara Sidner has disclosed that she has been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.

The emotional media personality announced her news while on air while pleading with women to do their mammograms and self-test exams over the serious nature of the medical condition.

"Please for the love of God get your mammograms and do your self-exams. I want you to thrive my sisters."

She added she has never been sick and doesn't smoke, so she was shocked she is among the statistics of sick people

"I want to start by asking you to do me a favor. Take a second to recall the names of 8 women in your life, statistically speaking one of them will get or has breast cancer. I am 1 in 8."

Sara told of   her diagnosis Monday, Jan 8 morning on CNN News Central

"I have never been really sick a day in my life. I don't smoke, rarely drink. Breast cancer does not run in my family. And here I stand with stage 3 breast cancer. I am in my second month of chemo."

She will do radiation and a double masectomy.

"This is not a death sentence anymore. But here is the reality that shocked my systems. Something I never knew before this diagnosis. To all my black woman you are more likely to die from breast cancer than white women. 41 %. Please for the love fo God, get your mammograms every year, do your self-exam, try to catch it before I did."

In a story published in People Magazine, Sara said how in October what she learned had raised some concerns.

She was informed that she would need to do additional tests - a biopsy. Sara was out of the country for 3 weeks and couldn't do the biopsy, this filled her with a sense of dread.

"Seeing the kind of suffering going on where I was and seeing people still live through the worst thing that has ever happened to them with grace and kindness, I was blown away by their resilience," Sidner, 51, tells PEOPLE. "In some weird way, it helped me with my own perspective on what I am going to be facing."

Several Kenyan journalists have succumbed to breast cancer including Catherine Kasavuli, Janet Kanini, Anjlee Gadhvi, Anne Waithera, Njoki wa Ndegwa, and Zipporah Njeri among others.

Other celebrities who've publicly battled breast cancer include Kenyana actress Winnie Bwire who has appealed for donations.

BY  MAUREEN WARUINGE