Jenna Fischer teared up as she reflected on her journey to being breast cancer-free just two weeks after sharing her initial health news.
“I never had a big shave-your-head moment,” Fischer told “The Today Show” host Hoda Kotb in a special interview segment on Monday. She explained that losing her hair and vomiting were some of the fears she had going into chemotherapy. “I did not throw up, but I did lose my hair … I would kind of do a real elaborate combover.”
On Oct. 8, the “Office” actress shared that she was cancer-free after being diagnosed with Stage 1 Triple Positive Breast Cancer, which she learned about through a regular checkup.
“I went in for my routine mammogram. It’s that annoying appointment that I’d been putting off, and then three weeks later, they said, ‘There were a few spots that are difficult to see; you have dense tissue. We would recommend you do another mammogram and follow up with a breast ultrasound,’” Fischer explained, adding that it was an “eye roll” scenario as she admittedly saw the further cautionary steps as an inconvenience.
“It was a total eye roll. This is why I put this off because now I have to go back again. After the ultrasound, they said, ‘Well, we found something. We’re going to need to do a biopsy,” Fischer shared.
“That’s when I got nervous,” she said of her first procedure, which she could subsequently track with a medical portal. “I was on a hike, checked the portal on the hike, and that’s when I saw words like, invasive, ductal, carcinoma, malignant, and I was like, ‘Those words sound like cancer words.’”
That’s when she learned her diagnosis, which is a rare aggressive form of breast cancer. Fischer said knew she would have to endure surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and then targeted therapies of Herceptin and Tamoxifen, which she is “still doing now,” adding: “I still have my port, which is where I got my chemo … I’ll do that until February of next year.”
Throughout her fight, she said her husband and former co-star/bestie Angela Kinsey were right by her side.
“My husband Lee was absolutely incredible. A typical morning for us would be both of us getting up in the morning and making school lunches and doing school drop-offs. But under the circumstances…” Fischer then paused as she started to tear up. “The most I could do was just get downstairs and sit at the table with a cup of coffee, and he did all the rest.”
As for Kinsey, Fischer said she told her friend that she wanted to continue taping their “Office Ladies” podcast, but didn’t want any of their staff to know about her diagnosis.
“From the beginning she said, ‘Whatever you need, You tell me, I’m here,’ and I said, ‘I want to keep working and I don’t want anyone to know at work.’ At work, I want that to be a space where we go and we laugh and I’m not a cancer patient. I need that.’ And she said, ‘OK,’” the “Mean Girls” star explained, noting that at one point Kinsey began wearing hats to work so Fischer wouldn’t be the only one wearing them to cover up her hair loss.
After surgery, radiation and 12 rounds of chemo, doctors confirmed there was no evidence of cancer, Kotb detailed. After getting to the end of the battle, Fischer said there was one thing she wanted to do to celebrate: ring the bell. But because her infusion center didn’t have a bell, her husband and family bought their own and celebrated at home.
“My husband, Lee, said, ‘What do you want to do to celebrate being done with chemo?’” she recalled. “I said, ‘I want a bell. I want to ring a bell in the backyard and I want confetti.”
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