Actor Danielle Fishel is meeting a health challenge head-on, predicting she will be “fine.”
“I was recently diagnosed with DCIS, which stands for ductal carcinoma in situ, which is a form of breast cancer,” the “Boy Meets World” alumna, 43, said Monday on her “Pod Meets World” podcast. “It is very, very, very early. It’s technically Stage 0.”
Fishel found out about her DCIS — a cancer of the milk ducts in the breasts — during a routine mammogram, something she urges other women not to skip.
“To be specific, just because I like too much information all the time, I was diagnosed with ‘high-grade DCIS with microinvasion,’” she said. “And I’m going to be fine.”
High-grade cancer grows the fastest, is most likely to come back after surgery and is most likely to turn into invasive breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. “Invasion” refers to whether the cancer cells have grown past the breast ducts or nearby lobules.
Fishel will have the cancer removed surgically and then have follow-up treatments.
The actor, who played Topanga Lawrence on the 1990s sitcom, said she always thought she would “suffer in silence” if she got this kind of diagnosis until she was “on the other side of it,” and then she would tell people. But she said she’s learned along the way that the most learning can come from the beginning or “very messy middle” of a story, compared with hearing only the “pretty picture” some people present when their struggles are done.
“The only reason I caught this cancer so early, when it is still Stage 0, is because the day I got the text message that my yearly mammogram had come up, I made the appointment,” said Fishel, who reprised her Topanga role in the sitcom “Girl Meets World,” a sequel to the 1990s original.
“And the fact that I am good about going to my doctors appointments, when truthfully, it would be so much easier, with as busy as I am, with the 50 jobs I have, and the two kids and the husband and the house, it would be so easy to say, ‘I don’t have time for that. I went to my mammogram last year — I was fine last year. I don’t need to go this year.’”
But she took the slightly annoying path instead. “And they found it so so so early, I’m going to be fine.”
That said, she still has more to do, meeting with oncologists and other specialists before she makes the “big decisions” she has to make. Fishel noted that she might miss a few episodes of her podcast as she takes care of business.
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