Robin Quivers, Howard Stern’s longtime co-host, opened up People about living with endometrial cancer for 11 years.
‘I feel fine. I’ve been dealing with this for 11 years — and I’m still here,” she told the publication in a new interview.
The radio personality was diagnosed with endometrial cancer in 2012 after she had trouble urinating and felt strangely tired.
“It was painful, it was scary, it was bizarre,” she recalled.
But initially “no one could diagnose it,” the 71-year-old media figure said.
Candid: Howard Stern’s longtime co-host Robin Quivers opened up to People for 11 years about living with endometrial cancer; in the photo in 2018
Her story: The radio personality was diagnosed with endometrial cancer in 2012 after having trouble urinating and feeling strangely tired; pictured with Stern in 2001
The Baltimore, Maryland, resident sought the expertise of a gynecologist and a gastroenterologist.
She was given a series of CT scans, MRIs and biopsies, all of which yielded inconclusive results.
“They told me, ‘We really don’t know what this is. We can’t identify it without going in and getting it,'” she explained.
It was later discovered that a “mass the size of a grapefruit” was “resting on every organ in her pelvic area.”
Quivers required a hysterectomy, followed by “hours of carefully scraping off layers of tissue without destroying (any) organ it had touched.”
Test results, plus feedback from a new group of medical professionals, revealed she had a rare form of stage 3C endometrial cancer, which lines the uterus.
It is the most common gynecological cancer in the United States, notes the American Cancer Society, with an estimated 66,000 women diagnosed each year.
After the operation, Robin underwent radiation and chemotherapy for over a year.
Perseverance: ‘I feel fine. I’ve been dealing with this for 11 years – and I’m still here,” she told the publication in a new interview; in the photo in 2015
Thriving: “I’m interested in everyone having a fuller life, more options and knowing what’s possible,” she noted, adding that she now travels more and has made healthy lifestyle changes; in the photo in 2018
Throughout the process, Robin said her close friends “just surrounded me and created this network to take care of me.” I never had to ask for anything. It was just overwhelming.”
“I was pretty tired, but I felt fine,” she recalled of her six rounds of chemotherapy and six weeks of radiation. She was cancer-free for three years before the disease returned and spread to her lymph nodes in 2016.
“It’s never been a big deal,” she told the outlet. ‘If there is any growth, we have to manage it.’ Robin is now undergoing intermittent immunotherapy infusions. “When you’re in treatment and out of treatment, you’re always recovering and trying to get back to where you were.”
“I want everyone to have a fuller life, more options and to know what is possible,” she noted, adding that she now travels more and has made healthy lifestyle changes.