Hey, there are folks. Sixty percent of Americans have avoided common health screenings? Are you in that sixty percent? And also, what is your excuse? And with that, I say, after scolding you, I'll say, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ.
Robes.
You have been in this position before, and I was well documented. We talked about it here. You put off a very important health screening for a long time, and your reasons were BS in a lot of ways.
So I think all of our reasons, all of our reasons are bs because we say we're too busy. But the truth is, until you lose your health or you realize you aren't in good health, you don't fully understand how nothing else matters. And so actually it should be the one thing you prioritize over everything else. And yet most of us make excuses because who wants to go to the doctor. Who wants to be poked and prodded?
So I get it. It seems uncomfortable, and it seems a lot of times unnecessary because none of us think we're going to be the one who gets that diagnosis that we have to then do something about. Intrigued and let me.
Make sure, let me be clear, here it sounds like I'm getting on too.
You.
You were well documented on how you knew you should have been going. But also you're talking to a guy who if it ain't broken, ain't bleed, and I ain't going. That is the I think a lot of guys have that much. It has to be that serious for us to go get a checkup of any kind or have a doctor check us out. So I am absolutely guilty of that.
Well, we actually have. If you aren't just taking our word for it or the survey's word for it. You know, every time we hear and I am always so impressed with anyone who is in the public guy who's willing to come forward and be vulnerable and share with the rest of the world something that they're personally experiencing. And oftentimes, when you're going through any kind of an illness, it can be debilitating, It can be embarrassing, it can be humiliating.
You feel weak, you feel less then and for those folks who are brave enough to say, hey, this and to me it always serves as an incredible wake up call to anyone else who may be dragging their feet for making any kind of important doctor's appointment or even just that annual appointment that we all need to make sure we know we're in a good place with health.
So one of those women is just step forward actually in the recent months, and she is with us on the podcast today, and she will be a familiar voice, a familiar face, and a familiar name to many of you. She grew up on TV screens across America, and if you loved the show Boy Meets World or the show that followed Girl Meets World, you know Tapanga and you know Danielle Fischel, and she is our guest today on the podcast. Danielle, thank you so much for being with us.
Thank you so much for having me and being willing to have this conversation.
Well, Danielle, you have joined the sisterhood that none of us want to be a part of. And I joined eleven years ago. You have a more recent history with and in fact, you just told everyone in August, just a few months ago, Danil, that you were diagnosed with breast cancer. So I want to ask you, first of all, how you are doing.
I'm doing really well. As you mentioned, I was diagnosed just a couple months ago. I was actually diagnosed in July twenty second. So it's only been two months, really since three months since my diagnosis, and I mobilized very quickly. I took it very seriously. I wanted to know all the information. I wanted to have all the options in front of me and figure out what was my best
path forward. And I realized very quickly, just from talking to my friends that a lot of them had said, oh, I've never had a mammogram, Oh I haven't had one for two years, or my mom hasn't been since before the pandemic in twenty twenty. And shortly after that, I came across the Affleck Wellness Matter survey and it mentioned that sixty five percent of millennials have avoided their yearly screenings.
And last year my mammogram was clean. So I can really speak to the testament of in just a year, you can go from no cancer to getting a cancer diagnosis. And I knew that if it were happening in my friends and that stat of sixty five percent of millennials, I knew I could really speak to them and say, you need to start taking care of yourself.
Why were you so diligent? You didn't have a family history. But from my understanding, you were on this like clockwork.
Yeah, Well, the American Cancer Society recommends that you start mammograms at forty and I was pregnant at forty and I was nursing at forty one, so my first mammogram was at forty two. And I do like to give credit to my family. My parents were both really diligent and still are really diligent about their own health screenings. I grew up hearing from my mom about mammograms and also hearing how awful and painful and miserable they were.
And even though I was not looking forward to a mammogram because of those stories, I knew that it was just kind of one of our family values that we
get our screenings when they're necessary. His mom died from leukemia and she chose to keep it a secret, and my mom didn't find out that her mom had cancer until three days before she died, and I think that was one of the things that really impacted my mom into saying, as part of our value system, we take care of ourselves and when something comes up, we share it with families so that we can rally around each other and help support each other, which is exactly what I did.
When I was diagnosed, daniel can I ask you and robok here actually because you said something I hadn't thought that much about. You grew up hearing how miserable they were. You grew up hearing a mammogram with something bad. This is a bad day at the office. So how much does that actually factor around? There is that still in women's psyche to this day, to where they're turned off by it because they've heard so much negative something about a mammogram from the family.
Absolutely, and Danielle, when I had my baseline mammogram only because I had a work assignment asking me to do a Mamma Van mammogram in the middle of Times Square to promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month, to encourage other women and to get their screening. But when I walked into that Mamma Van at that point, the recommendation was fifty not forty, and I was not going to get a
test ten years before some board recommended that I do it. Also, yeah, I didn't want to have my breasts flattened and squeezed. I mean that doesn't feel good. Of course it doesn't. So if I hadn't gotten that push into the Mamma
Van for a work assignment. I don't know that I'd be sitting next to you right now because I didn't have family history and the recommendation was fifty at the time, thank goodness, and I had been advocating for it from the moment I was diagnosed that the recommendation needed to go back to forty. But yeah, we all put off things that were painful, and I think most of us believe it can't happen to us, or it won't happen
to us. Danielle. It's interesting you had a family where your mom knew it could and did, and it was important to get on top of it. And to your point, you were on top of it. I was diagnosed stage two. It had already spread to my lipnodes, so I ended up with chemo and all sorts of other interventions that wouldn't have been necessary had I caught it earlier. You caught yours very early. You were stage zero, and that
is I mean that, amen, hallelujah. Early detection saves lives and you are living, breathing proof of it.
I am. And the technology is evolving so fast. I know, you know, mammograms are still not like, oh boy, I can't wait to go. It's so so fun. But honestly, compared to what I had been told that I could experience with a mammogram, I was really pleasantly surprised that it wasn't as awful as I had been led to believe. And I want you to know that, because if that's one of the reasons you're putting it off, you can
do hard things. You can get through it. It's relatively fast and for me, a lot of anxiety rely like lies in the unknown, knowing no one wants to hear that you have cancer. Like you said, it's not news you want to get. You hear that phone call. You're scared, You're completely overwhelmed. You immediately run to Google, and Google is filled with all kinds of scary things. But at least once I knew what I had, I knew I
could start a plan. There could be a plan that put in that I could put into action, and that gave me some semblance of control. And I also know that The afflic Wellness Matters survey showed that seventy five percent of people say that they really appreciate when a friend or family member encourages them to go and have their exams, and for me, that was something that really made me feel good because I don't want to be
a nag to anybody. I don't want to feel like I'm asking people to do things y'or butting into somebody's business. But if it's your time to get a mammogram, it's probably your best friend's time. Best friend time get a mammogram, so you can say to her, let's go together, Let's turn this into something fun. Let's get coffee after, let's go shopping. If you have that ability, gather some people around you and say, let's all take care of ourselves, because we tend to put ourselves last.
I love that, Danielle, and you know what, you know what I say too, because you're right. I also want to say it didn't hurt anywhere near as bad as I thought it was going to, so that is very important to say. But I also have said, you know what hurts a lot more chemo double mistectomies, being on medication for the rest of your life, and the anxiety.
All that's way worse than going and getting your mammogram and having peace of mind because more than likely it's going to be clean, it's going to be clear, and you're going to be able to breathe that sigh of relief at least for a year until your next mammogram. But it's better to know because knowledge is power, and you're right. I let you can take action. And when you actually have that information, there is so many there
are so many options for women right now. So I love this message and I can't believe you're just already in this amazing headspace, Danielle, three months into your diagnosis. It took me about two years before I could come out of the fog and the fear.
You know, I really have to give so much credit to the breast cancer community that you are a part of. I have felt so enveloped, so warm, like a massive embrace from the breast cancer community who just reached out to me, whether I knew them or not, saying Hi, I have resources for you, I have doctors for you. I'm here if you want to talk. Let me send you the link to the best supportive brad that I found for post surgery. Here's information I found on radiation
if you're interested. Here's been my experience ontomoxifen. I spent a lot of time in the breast cancer Reddit and so special. Shout out to those breast cancer redditors because they are so open and honest and want to share their experiences and can It's it's a community you never want to join, but if you ever have to join us, I promise you you are in the best company.
Danielle, what's your prognosis right now? What doctors told you about what you're going to have to do now for the I guess the rest of your life.
Yeah, so I will definitely need to be on hormone therapy. Cancer was estrogen positive, so I'll need to go on some sort of estrogen blocker, which, you know, another thing I'm not exactly looking forward to. I've heard mixed results about those side effects. And I also will most likely
need to have targeted radiation. Possibly we'll breast radiation. I have a few appointments coming up next week next week with some radiation oncologists, and those decisions will be made with my team, and you know, I still have that
part of it in front of me. But being able to stay focused on my family, the community around me, and very specifically spreading this message has been so helpful to me because it really stopped me from turning inward and kind of yeah, focusing on all the fear that could be there and knowing that it's making a difference and it's having a positive impact on others has helped me more than anyone will ever know.
Daniel I am and I couldn't agree with you more. And I just I am so impressed with you and where you are. And if you want any side conversation, you can call me. I was on tom oxyphon for eight years and I'm a big advocate for that because I remember my oncologist told me the tomoxofin is more important than the chemo actually when it comes to results. So if you want to have a side conversation about it, I can tell you it's not as bad as people say it is. I think, very similar to the Mammi grand.
You want to hear all.
About we're all together. I've been hearing about from you.
Just get ready for the hot flashes. That's all I have to say. But tell us about looking forward to that. It beats a lot of other things though, and we're here to talk about it, and that's that's important. And Danielle, I know that you were and I felt the same way. Work and staying busy and staying active. I know, you've got two young children, you've got your your wonderful husband, who I read it was a difficult conversation to tell him that you had cancer because both his parents. He
lost both of his parents to cancer. So that's just these are tough conversations and scary conversations, but when you have them, that's how you get them. But going to work and keeping yourself busy, it how important was that to you and tell us what you're doing professionally and personally right now?
Yeah, it was really important to me to be able to stay focused on work. And it was actually one of the decisions that went into me deciding to have a lumpectomy versus a double mess ectomy. Thankfully, I don't have any of the Broca genes or other genes that could make me more susceptible to cancer in the future,
so that also played a factor. But I had you know, I've been working since twenty seventeen to be a full time director behind the camera, and I had five weeks of work directing a show called Lopez Versus Lopez for NBC starring George Lopez and Myy and Lopez and it was starting on August twenty first, and I got my diagnosis on July twenty second, and I asked all the doctors I met with, is there any reason I can't put surgery off until, say, mid October, when I'm done directing,
And they all recommended to me that I not do that. They said, cancer is cancer, and my specific type was high grade, so it was aggressive. And they said, it doesn't send you a memo when it decides that it's going to spread, and so we don't recommend that you wait two months. And I said, okay, I do not want to lose this opportunity for this work. How quickly can I get in for surgery and how quickly will I be able to recover? And so I had surgery on August thirteenth, and I was at work on eight
twenty one, and I worked through it. I wore my compression, brought a work and I managed. I was tired and I was a little swollen, but I had great people around me. Staying busy, staying focused was very helpful. So I'm really lucky.
I don't mean to and you will, please if I'm totally out of line here, Danielle Robes, you all tell me. But from my vantage point, I've covered this for a long time, and we do breast cancer awareness and I wear a pink tie every year on certain days and all this stuff. But Danielle, I don't feel like I see your story highlighted enough as the success story. You caught it early, your prognosis is great, and I think so often and I'm not taking anything away from with
stage two and three and four. We talk about metastatic and we hear often these stories of these fighters, and those are brilliant, beautiful stories. But am I crazy in thinking that the face of and we don't Sometimes I feel like we're not highlighting what Danielle is talking about, which was this is a success story of why you have to do this and the prognosis is good? Am I crazy?
You get? When I'm here? I think people end up highlighting or telling more dramatic stories, and not that your story isn't dramatic, but the ones that might be scarier are the ones that seem more Okay, it's not just me fearful, but yeo, you don't hear about I don't think you hear enough women coming forward and saying I had stage zero and I have stage zero because I caught it early, and I caught it early because I made my appointment.
So Danielle, you feel that why are we your story should be repeated and repeated and repeated.
Well, it is really important, specifically again because the Affleck Wellness Matter survey also showed that fifty six percent of people who are diagnosed with cancer are diagnosed exactly how I was, which is during a routine screening. It's not because they feel a lump, it's not because they have other symptoms. It's because they stayed on top of a yearly exam. And so that is the only reason I
found out I had no symptoms. I had no lump, I wouldn't have for a long time, and then by the time I may have experienced a symptom, it could have been significantly more difficult to treat. So that's what I also wanted to share with people is that while no one still wants to get that phone call, hey, you have cancer. There's that is such a scary word for everyone, but finding out you have stage zero cancer
is very, very treatable. And my hope is that if you do have to get that call, you get the call like I did that is you just developed cancer and we found it like that, that's the best way to have to hear that news.
I just got chills when you said that, because that is the best way to get the worst news possible. How are your kids doing? How is your family doing? How did they handle the news? And talk about how important that was for you to tell, to tell the story in the right way and to get the support you needed.
Yeah, my family is doing really well.
I was.
You know, it was hard for me to have to tell my husband. As you mentioned, both of his parents pasted. His mom died in twenty twenty two from lung cancer, and she lived with us while she was going through chemo and through her cancer treatment. And my oldest son, Adler, was three when she passed, and he was very close to her. And one of my big concerns when he asked, Boar,
did Granna go? Why is Granna not here anymore? My big concern was that if we tell her, if we tell him that she was sick, he's going to think the next time he gets a cold that he's going to die, or that the next time mommy or daddy is sick, he's going to think we're going to die, and so I wanted to be honest with him about the fact that she had cancer and that cancer doesn't always mean that you die, but sometimes it does, and
in Grandmaw's case, that's what it was. And so when I was diagnosed, my fear was I'm normally so honest with my kids, but I can't tell them I have cancer. I just can't. I can't handle that possibility that they're going to worry about me in that way.
So they didn't.
They never They don't know that I had cancer, but they do know that I had a booboo that I had surgically removed from my body, and they needed to be gentle with me. I told them, I love our bear hugs and I love wrestling with you, but my booboo means that I need to be I need to be gentle, so you need to hug me from this side, and eventually I'll get back to wrestling with you. And when that did happen that I was able to wrestle with them and swing them around, Adler stopped and he said.
Mommy, is your booboo all better?
And I was so happy to tell him that, yes, my booboo was all better. And yeah, my family is great. And my mom was there with me for my surgeries, my dad and his wife were right there, my friends, my family, breast cancer community. I have never felt more loved and supported than I have in these last three months.
I mean, I know I have said I have never met a happier group of people than people who are fighting or have fought cancer, Because you get it, you get how important every day is. Every minute is in a way that maybe some people haven't had the opportunity to experience, where you realize how lucky we all are to be here, and there's just this joy, and there's just this gratitude about life, about every day, about every moment. How has your life changed since you got this diagnosis?
Yeah, I mean I really am hoping looking forward. I'm really hoping that this journey makes me become the type of person who says, oh, I let all sorts of little things just roll off my back. But thus far, I'm still extremely type A. I'm still extremely controlling. I still have road rage. It hasn't changed me as much as I would want it.
I love at answer, though, I mean, yes, I there are moments for it all comes back. You can remember it, but then still sometimes you just get stuck in the minutia of the moment and you forget.
That's a good thing, man, isn't it good to forget?
My son said to me. Really, yeah, my son said to me the other day, he said, Man, every person in this city is a bad driver. Because mom says it everything for me to stop saying all my thoughts out loud.
They're little sponges, those children, you know, they really are.
But before we listen, I do appreciate my health. I appreciate my health more now than I ever have. It has really inspired me to pay more attention to the food that I'm eating. It has inspired me to get into a healthy exercise regimen. That is definitely something that being a busy, working outside the home mother of two, I have let slide, like, yes, I will pick up this fast food I don't have time to make something, or I will work out tomorrow, which turns into next week,
which turns into next month. And once I got the go ahead from my doctors that I'm able to start working out again, it has definitely made me appreciate my health and to take the things I have control over, like those items into my own hands, because there's so much we can't control.
Well, Danielle, you are taking this by the horns and you are. I love that you are being so open and so forthcoming about what you went through, how you found your cancer, and how phenomenal your prognosis is. I hope it inspires women everywhere who are listening to make their appointments and people, men, women, children, whatever, whoever you are, your health is important and it's up to us to make sure that we take it seriously and then we
put ourselves first. And you are the poster woman for it. And I'm just so proud of you and so honored to be in a community with you, and I just appreciate your message so much. Danielle, thank you so much for being with us.
I appreciate you both so much, And thank you for your honesty and vulnerability to Amy. I appreciate it.