Breast and Ovarian Cancer: Stacey Sager’s story of perseverance, sacrifice and survival after 3 diagnoses [Video]

3 Decades, 3 Cancers

A Reporter’s Notebook

By Stacey Sager

This is by far the most difficult and personal story of my career — a story that began a quarter of a century ago and appeared to be a complete success. It was 1998, and a mammogram saved my life.

I was a rookie reporter at Eyewitness News and decided that the lesson from that was too important not to share with our viewers. And so at age 30, I apprehensively sat in the studio with Bill Beutel and Diana Williams and explained through interviews with my doctors, how tiny micro calcifications spotted in an area on the side of my left breast turned out to be a stage zero breast cancer known as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS).

I had a huge family history but had not yet had the genetic test for the BRCA mutation. It was just emerging as an option. I had a bilateral mastectomy because …