Jenna Fischer made a phone call to a close celebrity friend after finding out she had breast cancer.
Fischer, who starred in “The Office,” called Christina Applegate and said the “Dead to Me” star’s reaction was “salty.”
“I called her, and she answered the phone, and she said, ‘Which one is it?’ And I said, ‘It’s breast cancer.’ And she said, ‘I effing knew it,'” Fischer revealed on the “TODAY” show. “She’s salty. Salty language that one. I love her for it.”
‘THE OFFICE’S JENNA FISCHER SECRETLY BATTLED BREAST CANCER, IS NOW ‘CANCER FREE’
Jenna Fischer called Christina Applegate after finding out she had cancer. (Getty Images)
Fischer first shared her cancer journey on Instagram, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
“I never thought I’d be making an announcement like this but here we are,” she wrote on social media. “Last December, I was diagnosed with Stage 1 Triple Positive Breast Cancer. After completing surgery, chemotherapy and radiation I am now cancer free.”
“I wanted a photo of myself in my patchy pixie looking happy and healthy to go along with this news. A big thank you to Angela Kinsey’s husband Josh Snyder for taking this photo. It’s just one example of the care they showed me during this journey.”
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Jenna Fischer (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)
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Fischer first went for a mammogram in October 2023, but the results came back inconclusive. The actress’ doctor recommended she go have a breast ultrasound, which showed a spot on her left breast. After a biopsy, Fischer received her breast cancer diagnosis on Dec. 1, 2023.
“Triple positive breast cancer is an aggressive form of breast cancer but it is also highly responsive to treatment,” Fischer wrote. “In January, I had a lumpectomy to remove the tumor. Luckily my cancer was caught early and it hadn’t spread into my lymph nodes or throughout the rest of my body, however because of aggressive nature of triple positive cancer it still required chemotherapy and radiation to be sure it didn’t return.”
She added: “It takes a village to fight cancer, and I have had an amazing village. Until this happened, I don’t think I really knew the generosity and kindness that could rain down from one person to another. It started with a team of doctors and nurses. All of them angels.”
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Jenna Fischer celebrated being “cancer free” nearly one year after receiving her diagnosis. (Getty Images)
After finding out the news, Fischer sat her children down and was “very honest with them.”
“They’re 10 and they’re 13, and they were going to be living in the house while I went through this,” she told the “TODAY” show. “They’re going to see it. And the biggest thing that I wanted them to know was that any ways that I seemed sick during this process were side effects of treatments. They weren’t cancer making me sick.”
“That distinction, I think, really put them at ease,” she added. “And then we just kind of did it together. And they were amazing.”