Former MTV VJ Ananda Lewis has revealed she’s been diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer.
After initially sharing her stage 3 status on Instagram in 2020, she said she decided to go against having a doctor-recommended double mastectomy to treat her cancer at the time.
“I decided to keep my tumor and try to work it out of my body a different way,” she shared during a CNN roundtable this week. “Looking back on that I go, ‘Girl, maybe I should’ve [had the surgery].’”
Lewis, 51, said she learned last year the cancer had metastasized into stage 4.
“That scan showed that I had this [cancer] kind of up my spine, through my hip, almost everywhere but my brain,” the former “Teen Summit” host said. “I’ve never been in pain like that in my life.”
“It was the first time I ever had a conversation with death,” Lewis confessed to her close friend, CNN correspondent Stephanie Elam. “I felt like this is how it ends. I don’t get afraid of things. I was just like, ‘Fudge, man. I really thought I had this.’ I was frustrated. I was a little angry at myself.”
Due to the current stage of her illness, Lewis said she isn’t a candidate for surgery and chemotherapy.
She told The New York Times on Wednesday that she’s now taking a drug that treats advanced stage cancer: “Those medications are working beautifully for me in combination with the other things I’m doing that help support my body. I’m really thriving right now.”
Lewis said the unspecified medicine shrank some of the tumors, making some of them “almost undetectable.”