“Boy Meets World” star Danielle Fishel announced Monday she has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I was recently diagnosed with DCIS, which stands for ductal carcinoma in situ, which is a form of breast cancer,” she told former co-stars Rider Strong and Will Friedle and their audience on the “Pod Meets World” podcast. “It is very, very, very early. It’s technically stage zero. To be specific, just because I like too much information all the time, I was diagnosed with high-grade DCIS with micro-invasion.”
DCIS is breast cancer at its earliest stage, according to breastcancer.org. “DCIS isn’t life-threatening, but if you’re diagnosed with DCIS, you have a higher risk of developing invasive breast cancer later in life,” the site states. “About 20% to 25% of new breast cancers diagnosed in the United States are DCIS.”
Fishel added: “I’m going to be fine. I’m having surgery to remove it. I’m going to be on some follow-up treatment. I’ve had to make a lot of decisions over the last couple of days.”
The 43-year-old mother of two emphasized her doctors were able to catch the tumor at such an early stage because she went for her annual mammogram.
“The only reason I caught this cancer when it is still stage zero is because the day I got my text message that my yearly mammogram had come up, I made the appointment,” she said.
The actress told her audience she always thought she’d be someone who suffered in silence if she were ever diagnosed with a disease.
But she cited author Glennon Doyle, paraphrasing “the place you have the most to learn from is at the very beginning of a story, or in the very messy middle of a story” and she decided to share her experience, CNN reported.
Fishel rose to fame playing Topanga Lawrence from 1993 to 2000 on the hit TV show “Boy Meets World.” She reprised that role on the spinoff “Girl Meets World,” which ran 2014-2017.
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