ESPN “SportsCenter” host Hannah Storm was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year.
Storm, 61, announced the news Tuesday in an interview with People magazine.
“I just heard ‘breast cancer’ and I was shocked,” Storm told the outlet. “I was so stunned. I’ve had yearly mammograms and there was never anything, I have no family history. I had no pain. I had no lumps. I literally had nothing that would’ve indicated that I had breast cancer.”
Storm went to her doctor for a routine mammogram in November 2023, according to People. The docs then scheduled a follow-up ultrasound appointment for Jan. 3. After that, Storm got a call.
“They said, ‘We saw something and we’d like to biopsy it. It’s probably nothing. Not a big deal,’” she told People. “I kind of wish they hadn’t said it’s not a big deal.”
Storm had her biopsy a week later and received a call from the radiologist on Jan. 11, People reported. She had been diagnosed with a “stage zero” breast cancer called ductal carcinoma in situ.
In DCIS, cells that line the milk ducts of the breast have become cancerous, but the cancer has not spread into the breast tissue, according to the American Cancer Society.
Dr. Elisa Port of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital “called me immediately and her first words were, ‘You’re going to die of something. You are not going to die of this,’” Storm told People. “She not only did my surgery but guided me through the entire process.”
Storm went into surgery on Feb. 1, and Port called her a week later to tell her it was successful, People reported.
Storm’s follow-up treatments have included taking hormone therapy drug Tamoxifen, which is often prescribed as a breast cancer treatment.
“I had no signs,” Storm told People. “If I hadn’t had a mammogram, I would not have known this was there and it could have been much more dangerous, much more serious, and potentially deadly.”
