CNN’s Sara Sidner said she faced a terrifying health scare after a recent PET scan came back with potentially concerning results.
The network’s longtime news anchor, 54, was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2023. She shared the diagnosis on-air with viewers in January 2024, revealing that she was in her second month of chemotherapy. She was declared cancer-free later that year.
During Friday morning’s segment of the CNN News Central program, Sidner, 54, recalled the recent follow-up appointment.
She said the PET scan came back “lit up like a Christmas tree.” “It indicated I was likely metastatic, stage 4 cancer, incurable. It appeared to have spread to my hip, my spine, my liver, my lungs. I was inconsolable at the time,” she remembered. “I thought cancer had spread all over my body.”
Sidner immediately began thinking the worst. “I looked up, ‘How long do I have to live?’” she asked the doctor. “The number came back, less than five years. It knocked the breath out of me, as you might imagine. Then I cried.”
To double-check the findings, the doctors performed a biopsy. The results took just over two weeks to come back, which Sidner described as “fifteen days of torture.”
The biopsy came back malignant. To confirm the results, she took a molecular cancer blood test. “Not cancer. Again, shock because this scan suggested otherwise,” she added. “The doctor then made very clear, biopsy beats scan. I had a deep, guttural sigh of relief.”
She remembered a “lump of tears” gathering in her throat when she heard the news.
Sidner has worked for CNN for 18 years, joining the network in 2008 as a national and international correspondent. In 2022, she launched and hosted her own show, Big Picture with Sara Sidner, which aired on the company’s short-lived CNN+ streaming service. The following year, she officially transitioned to co-host CNN News Central.
She has continued to use her platform to emphasize the importance of annual breast cancer screenings, as well as conducting regular self-examinations.
“I have thanked cancer for choosing me,” Sidner said on-air in 2024. “I am learning that no matter what hell we go through in life that I am still madly in love with this life. And just being alive feels really different for me now. I am happier because I don’t stress about foolish little things that used to annoy me. And now every single day that I breathe another breath, I can celebrate that I am still here with you, I am still here with my co-anchors, my colleagues, my family, and I can love and cry and laugh and hope. And that my dear friends, is enough.”
