Katie Couric shares breast cancer diagnosis, encourages regular screening

Katie Couric, at one time known as the “Screen Queen” of colon cancer, revealed on Wednesday that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in June of 2022. Typically vigilant about her health, Couric admits in a post on her website that the pandemic may have “given me a skewed sense of time.” Of her decision to share this personal journey, she writes, “If I had forgotten to schedule a mammogram, this might be a helpful reminder for other people, too.”

Receiving a cancer diagnosis was particularly traumatic for Couric: “The heart-stopping, suspended animation feeling I remember all too well came flooding back: [Couric’s late husband] Jay’s colon cancer diagnosis at 41 and the terrifying, gutting nine months that followed. My sister Emily’s pancreatic cancer, which would later kill her at 54, just as her political career was really taking off. My mother-in-law Carol’s ovarian cancer, which she was fighting as she buried her son, a year and nine months before she herself was laid to rest.” Several other family members had also been diagnosed and survived, but, “Given my family’s history of cancer, why would I be spared? My reaction went from ‘Why me?’ to ‘Why not me?’”