Suzanne Somers shares update on her health: 'I'm a fighter'
Actress Suzanne Somers is responding to questions about her health after taking time off of work.
In a statement Somers posted to Instagram on Monday, the "Three's Company" star said she's had a recurrence of her breast cancer, but that she's a fighter.
"Since I have been taking time off from work, many of you have asked for more details about my health," she wrote. "As you know, I had breast cancer two decades ago, and every now and then it pops up again, and I continue to bat it down. I have used the best alternative and conventional treatments to combat it. This is not new territory for me. I know how to put on my battle gear and I'm a fighter."
Thanks to advances in cancer treatments, many people with cancer are living for decades while managing multiple reoccurrences.
Somers, 76, also said much of her strength has come from her longtime husband, Alan Hamel, whom she said has "been by my side every step of the way."
"I can't even explain how much he has done for me," she added. "If it's even possible, we are even closer than ever."
The "Step by Step" star also praised her "supportive" family and thanked her fans for their "continued love and support."
"It's only about who you love and who loves you - and I love you!" she concluded her post.
Somers was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001. She opened up for the first time about her battle with the disease during an interview on CNN with Larry King.
"I chose your show to come on tonight to talk about something that is very hard for me to talk about, that I have never told anyone," she told King at the time following tabloid photos of her leaving a liposuction clinic. "In the last year I have been battling and surviving breast cancer, and I was in that clinic, and it all has to do with my breast cancer."
"I think the most shocking words I ever thought, I never thought, I would ever in my life hear someone say to me that you have breast cancer," she added.
Somers, whose sister also had breast cancer, said that it was during a routine mammogram appointment that her doctors found "lumps" and "bumps" on her breasts. She said that doctors, who used an ultrasound machine, found a 2.4 centimeter tumor that was "hidden deep in my breast" and was "not detected by the mammogram."
"The machine saved my life," she said. "If I had waited until my annual next year, [the doctor] said it probably would have been too late."
After her diagnosis, Somers said she underwent a lumpectomy and underwent radiation therapy. She also said she went against medical guidance and took to alternative therapy, which used mistletoe extract injections. It was seen as controversial at the time. Advocates of these injections say they work by stimulating the immune system to help fight cancer, but they are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration as no controlled human studies have shown mistletoe to have any significant anti-cancer activity.
