(Photo by Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images)
After growing up in Mississippi and attending Southeastern Louisiana University, Robin Roberts was a sports anchor for local TV and radio stations.
Roberts was a sportscaster on ESPN for 15 years (1990–2005).
She became co-anchor on Good Morning America in 2005. It was that time during Good Morning America that the whole world would see what Robin was made of.
In 2007, Robin was diagnosed with breast cancer, and underwent surgery, chemotherapy and six weeks of radiation therapy, bravely returning to work only a couple of weeks after an operation.
“I was living happily ever after, with no family history of cancer, and found a lump in my right breast,” explains Roberts. “Thankfully, I had done self-exams, and so I realized that this lump was different and I needed to have it examined. The mammogram came back perfect, but my doctor had also put in a prescription for a follow-up ultrasound, and that’s how the tumor was detected. Then I had a needle biopsy, which determined that it was cancerous.”
“With more testing, it was determined to be triple-negative breast cancer. I had never heard that term, and I was bewildered. Plus, I was told that, as an African-American woman, I was less likely to be diagnosed with cancer, but now that I was, I was more likely to die from it. What in heck do you do with that stat?”
If that wasn’t enough, just five years after her breast cancer, Roberts was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder and had to undergo a bone marrow transplant. That’s when became an inspiration to millions.
“I learned when I was first diagnosed with MDS that many in the transplant community consider the anniversary of their bone marrow transplant to be their new birthday,” Robin said.
(Photo credit: Instagram)
READ: What Is MDS?
Robin, 60, underwent the transplant on Sept. 20, 2012.
She was injected with a syringe carrying cells donated by her sister Sally-Ann, according to Dr. Gail Roboz, an oncologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Roberts revealed that same year in June that she had been diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). It’s a bone marrow disorder triggered by treatment for breast cancer over five years ago.
The breast cancer survivor recalled a moment when she felt like she was dying. Her doctor warned of the feeling. “I was in a pain I had never experienced before, physically and mentally,” said Roberts.
She adds, “I was in a coma-like state. I truly felt I was slipping away. Then I kept hearing, ‘Robin! Robin!’ I came out of it, and it was my nurse Jenny. She was screaming at me. I saw her enlarged eyes above her mask, pleading for me to stay here. And thankfully I did. I came back.”
“I don’t know if my heart will ever stop pounding, waiting to hear what the numbers are,” said Roberts about her blood counts. But she remains optimistic of the future, “I want to give people hope. I want to let them know there is another day.”
Then she reveals, “I can be fearful or fearless. I choose to be fearless.”
Long before she was courting celebrities on Good Morning America, anchor Robin Roberts was a star player on the basketball court.
Her love affair with basketball was born at Southeastern Louisiana University as a record-setting power forward for the Lady Lions. After college, she went from being a college athlete to covering them and went on to become one of the defining voices of women’s college basketball. Now, Robin is being inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor for “having significantly impacted the game of women’s basketball.”
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