NEW YORK (AP) — Katie Couric said Wednesday that she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer, and underwent surgery and radiation treatment this summer to treat the tumor.
Couric, who memorably was tested for colon cancer on the “Today” show in 2000, announced her diagnosis in an essay on her website, saying she hoped it would encourage other women to be tested.
Couric, 65, was diagnosed on the first day of summer and wrote that she had her final radiation treatment on Tuesday.
“My left breast does feel like I’ve been sunbathing topless, but other than that, I’ve felt fine,” she wrote.
Couric’s first husband, Jay Monahan, died of colon cancer in 1998 at age 41 and her sister Emily was 54 when she died of pancreatic cancer in 2001. Given her family history, Couric wrote, “why would I be spared? My reaction went from ‘why me?’ to ‘why not me?'”