Lunden’s battling cancer
FORMER “Good Morning America” co-host Joan Lunden returned to ABC’s morning show Tuesday to reveal she has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Lunden, 63, the longest-serving “GMA” co-host in the show’s history — her run lasted from 1980 to 1997 — broke the news to Robin Roberts on TV and simultaneously on Twitter and Facebook.
“I heard those words that every woman fears and never wants to hear: ‘You have breast cancer,’” Lunden told Roberts.
Roberts and “GMA” news anchor Amy Robach have also recently been treated for breast cancer.
Lunden’s treatment will include a lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiation, and she is expected to make a full recovery.
Lunden said the cancer was found not in her annual mammogram but in a followup ultrasound routinely done in addition to the mammogram because Lunden has “dense fibrous tissue.”
Lunden then underwent a biopsy that found what she described as an “aggressive” kind of cancer that will require chemotherapy, surgery and radiation to treat.
“I have covered many stories about breast cancer over the years but I never actually thought this would happen to me,” Lunden wrote on Facebook.
Lunden said the shocking diagnosis has only brought her big family closer together.
“I have just one of the best husbands anyone could ever ask for,” Lunden said of Jeff Konigsberg, whom she married in 2000.
She said her three older daughters from her first marriage have come to every appointment, and her two sets of twins — 9 years old and 11 years old – were able to get the good news that “Mommy is going to be OK” because she got the diagnosis early on.