Danielle Fishel attends the 2023 iHeartRadio Music Festival at T-Mobile Arena on September 22, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Originally appeared on E! Online
Decades after Danielle Fishel captivated an entire generation as Topanga Lawrence on the '90s show "Boy Meets World," she’s bringing fans into another world — the one she’s faced amid her cancer journey.
Two months after sharing she was diagnosed with high grade ductal carcinoma in situ — stage zero breast cancer — with possible micro invasion, a condition that would require her to undergo surgery, the actress gave an update on her health.
“On August 13, I had my first surgery,” Fishel exclusively told E! News about her lumpectomy. “They went in, they removed a mass. That pathology came back that they had one margin they weren't thrilled with. The medial margin had cancer a little too close to it.”
As a result, the 43-year-old underwent a second procedure in September. “That pathology came back with no more evidence of cancer and all clear margins,” she said. “So surgically, I am now done.”
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"Boy Meets World" star Danielle Fishel shares breast cancer diagnosis
But as Fishel noted, her treatment plan is far from over.
“The next stage is radiation, and the decision about whether I need to do whole breast radiation, or I need to do targeted radiation, or a combination of the two or if I'm going to do radiation at all,” she explained. “Those are topics that I have yet to decide, and I have to make them with the care of my doctors. I haven't picked a radiation oncologist yet. I'm about ready to start those appointments.”
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"Additionally," the "Girl Meets World" alum said, “I will most likely be starting a hormone therapy, an estrogen blocker, because my cancer was estrogen-positive, so it was feeding off of estrogen.”
While Fishel is grateful she caught her cancer early, she emphasized that, no matter the stage, it’s still a difficult road.
“Being on hormone therapy, that's a lifelong thing or at least until I'm all the way through menopause,” the "Pod Meets World" host noted. “When I first was diagnosed, I had a fellow cancer survivor reach out to me, and I was like, 'Yeah, but thankfully mine is stage zero.’ And she wrote back and she said, 'I just want you to know there is no easy cancer.' And I thought about her saying that to me many times over the course of this treatment that I've been on so far.”
One of the hardest parts, Fishel said, has been the constant waiting.
“Once you find out you know you have cancer, you want so badly to make a plan, and to move forward on that plan, and to get the cancer out of you,” she shared. “And there's kind of a lot of time before you can start making all of those, aside from the fact that it takes a long time to get certain doctor's appointments.”
Even after seeing those specialists, she continued, there’s more waiting for test results and dealing with the unknown can be scary.
“I needed to have an MRI, and waiting for the results of the MRI takes five to seven days,” the TV star — who shares sons Adler, 5, and Keaton, 3, with husband Jensen Karp — added. “I needed to have genetic testing to see if I carried the BRCA gene. Getting those results takes up to a week. Even the unknown of based on your biopsy this is your diagnosis, but ultimately they don't know until they surgically open you up and look inside and then run that pathology. At any point, your diagnosis can change.”
As Fishel navigates the next steps in her treatment, she’s giving herself permission to feel all the emotions.
“I had lymph node removal to see if it had traveled to my lymph nodes. Thankfully, it had not,” she said. “But recovering from lymph node removal was not easy and is still something I'm dealing with. I have an incision in an uncomfortable place. I have two scars I didn't have before. I currently have a dent in my breast where a mass was removed. I'm trying to stay positive and say I'm so happy that because I had my routine screening I found it so early. But there's also a mourning and a sadness that is expected and I'm trying to not toxic positivity my way out of it.”
And if she’s able to convince people to stay on top of their routine screenings, then she knows publicly sharing her story will have been worth it. Which is why she partnered with Aflac during October's Breast Cancer Awareness Month to remind all the millennials who grew up watching her on TV how life-saving preventive care can be and to urge them to schedule any appointments they’ve been putting off.
“I was so blessed to be able to grow up on a TV screen and be a recognizable face to a lot of millennials,” Fishel told E!, going on to cite Aflac’s 2024 Wellness Matters Survey. “And if 65 percent of millennials are putting off their regular health screenings — and more than half of people who find out they have cancer, find out they have cancer at routine screenings like I did — I knew I had the ability to go public with my story and hopefully have it make a difference. And that was really important to me.”
“If I could say there's been one thing that's been helping me stay grounded and get through the diagnosis and the treatment and the upcoming treatments that I have,” she added, “it's been being able to focus on something bigger and greater than me.”
