– blogged by @LoveRubyWoo
Erin Andrews, one of the most successful women in sports broadcasting, recently revealed something that only the people closest to her knew about – that she had been battling cancer throughout a good portion of this NFL season.
According to Sports Illustrated, the 38-year-old Fox NFL sideline reporter was diagnosed with cervical cancer last September after a routine check-up. Luckily, the cancer was detected early enough, but the doctors told her that she needed to have surgery immediately in order to remove it from her body. Though she had just received terrible news, Andrews went on and worked the Giants-Redskins game the next day as if nothing had happened. The following week, she took a short break from her other job, co-hosting Dancing with the Stars, to go back home to Los Angeles and have the surgery done. She underwent the procedure on a Tuesday and by Sunday of that week, she was already back reporting on the sidelines of the Packers-Cowboys game. Though she eventually told her colleagues about her health issues, she decided against going public with the news. Instead, she kept on working diligently while dealing silently with the cancer, and she did not miss a single NFL game throughout the course of the season.
After removing the cancer, which required two surgeries in total, doctors informed Andrews that she did not need to go through radiation or chemotherapy, and she has remained cancer-free since.
Next Sunday, as Erin Andrews covers Super Bowl LI with the same energy and enthusiasm that she always displays, we will watch her with a newfound respect. After all that she has endured in the past year, not just with cancer but also with the very public and painful trial against her stalker, she is still standing and stronger than ever. As she told her fiancé, former NHL player Jarret Stoll, right before her surgery, “You’d play through any injury, do whatever it takes to get back out there. That’s going to be me.”
