WTAE’s Kelly Frey has breast cancer and is beginning treatment
Morning anchor says prognosis is ‘excellent’
WTAE-TV anchor Kelly Frey announced on Friday morning’s newscast the very personal news that she has breast cancer and was beginning treatment.
She said she was beginning 24 weeks of chemotherapy — in 16 treatments — right after the broadcast, but noted in a post on her Facebook page, “I plan to work ... to be with you each and every morning unless I truly feel too sick or fatigued.”
Posts of support piled up on Facebook and on a page the television station put up with video of the newscast announcement as well as a “video diary of her experience and story so far.” The site also includes a link to information about breast cancer.
See those at http:// www.wtae.com/article/kelly-freys Ms. Frey, who has been at WTAE for 17 years, told viewers, whom she considers “family,” that she has stage 1 triple negative invasive ductal carcinoma. The cancer cells do not respond to or feed off estrogen, progesterone and the HER2 protein, she said, and are not yet in her lymph nodes. “The cancer is ugly and it is very aggressive,” she said, but she noted that her prognosis is “excellent.”
She told viewers they will see changes: “I will lose my hair ... the hair doesn’t really bother me.” And she said that if viewers see her outside of work, “I’m going to have some cool cancer ballcaps lined up, because that’s me. I’m pretty lowmaintenance and I’m a really busy mom.
“Bald I will be in just a few weeks now and that’s going to be OK.”
She could not be reached for comment but told viewers that she has been quietly clearing her schedule for the next year and had a chest port implanted on March 3 to prepare for chemo.
Ms. Frey, 43, noted that she was going public to be transparent about her own situation as well as to help others and encouraged others to help women and men who receive the same diagnosis.
“My prayer,” she said, “is to raise awareness for early detection.”
She wrote on Facebook, “I have already been overwhelmed by the love shown to me and the outpouring of prayers.”
She noted that this isn’t as bad as the anguish, about which she also was public, surrounding her son, whom doctors had recommended she abort after he was diagnosed in the womb with a severe defect of brain formation that he had no chance of surviving. But she and her husband decided to have the child and work with his medical conditions.
“When I see my 7-year old, 67pound son,” she wrote, “I am reminded every day how absolutely precious and priceless life is.”
She signed off the newscast by blowing viewers a kiss and with a short laugh and a “See ya Monday.”