For the past four years, fans of Ananda Lewis have been following her cancer journey. And although some have questioned her course of treatment, everyone has hoped for the best possible outcome.
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Now, in an October 15 interview with CNN’s Stephanie Elam, Lewis shared the heartbreaking news that her cancer has spread and is now stage IV.
Lewis told Elam that when she was diagnosed, she decided to go against her doctor’s recommendation to have a double mastectomy because she didn’t feel like the procedure, which involves removing both breasts, was a good option for her at the time.
“They wanted to take both [breasts]. They wanted to do all of these big things that I was not ready for,” she said.
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Instead, she decided to trust her body to remove the cancer on its own by making changes to her diet and sleep routine.
“My plan at first was to get out the excessive toxins in my body. I felt like my body is intelligent. I know that to be true. Our bodies are brilliantly made,” she said. “ I decided to keep my tumor and try to work it out of my body a different way.
“Looking back on that, I go, ‘You know what? Maybe I should have [had a double mastectomy],’” she said. “My lymph system really flared up.It was the first time I ever had a conversation with death because I felt like, this is how it is.”
Lewis first shared her stage III diagnosis with fans on Instagram in 2020. At the time, Lewis said she had been fighting her cancer battle in private for nearly two years.
“This is tough for me, but if just ONE woman decides to get her mammogram after watching this, what I’m going through will be worth it,” she captioned her post.
In the video, Lewis explained that even though she has a family history of breast cancer, she refused regular mammograms, thinking the exposure to radiation was more perilous – thinking, she admitted, she now regrets.
“I would have probably had 3 or 4 mammograms by the time they caught [the breast cancer]. Instead, I have had to have two PET scans so far. Guess how many mammograms worth of radiation a PET scan is worth? 30! So 60 mammograms. You do the math!” she said. “If I had done the mammograms from the time they were recommended, when I turned 40, they would have caught the tumor in my breast years before I caught it through my own breast exam, and they would have caught it at a place where the treatment of it would have been a little easier.”
Although Lewis didn’t share her doctor’s prognosis in the CNN interview, she did tell Elam that she wasn’t ready to give up her fight.
“I was just like, ‘Fudge man, I really thought I had this.’ I was frustrated, I was a little angry at myself, and I said, ‘Man, listen. I know you’re coming for me at some point. But I don’t want it to be now. And if you could just wait, I promise when you do come, I’m gonna make it fun for you,’” she said.
