Amy Robach Talks Breast Cancer & Mammograms: ‘I Didn’t Realize the First Life I Would Save Would Be My Own’

In 2014, GMA3 host Amy Robach was diagnosed with breast cancer. One of her colleagues, Robin Roberts, a breast cancer survivor herself, made her step into a mammo van, where she got her first mammogram. Now eight years later, Robach in cancer-free and using her voice to encourage other women to get screened early. As the cover star of our first-ever Breast Cancer Awareness Issue, she sat down with SheKnows to discuss her breast cancer journey then and now.

“If you walk into that mammo van, and get your mammogram, and you convince one woman to have hers, you can save a life,” is what Roberts said to Robach that convinced her to get that mammogram. “What I didn’t realize was the first life I would save, was my own,” Robach confesses about her fateful mammo van day.

She also opened up about how people would react when she’d tell them she had breast cancer. The strangest response she got? “People just – they just look at your boobs, a lot!” Robach laughs she’d have to remind people to look up at her face and not her chest. Well, at least they were paying intense attention to what she told them. Robach gets more candid, “There are times where you feel like you are witnessing your own funeral.”

Since then, Robach says she decided she was “going to live like a country music song,” and not let the fear from her cancer keep her from living. She confesses that was a lightbulb moment for her: “What am I doing? I’m fighting to live, and yet I’m not living, I’m worry about dying.”

(And she happily admits that, yes, sometimes her kids use this to get her to say ‘yes’ to things!)

So since she lives life as a country music song, what is her theme song? “’Brave’ by Sara Bareilles: “That was my song and it still is my song.  Every time I hear it, I get emotional. I run to it. I actually planned the New York City marathon, to cross the finish line with ‘Brave’ playing.”

Today, she is cancer-free, running many marathons, and happily educating others about the importance of early screenings and taking that bold step into a mammo van. The only van we recommend stepping into on the streets of Manhattan!

For more Amy, check out the full cover story and the rest of the Breast Cancer Awareness Issue!

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