Erin Andrews is no stranger to the spotlight. And as a NFL broadcaster, she’s used to being one of the few women in the room in a male-dominated industry.
This is one of the reasons she said she felt she had to keep her cervical cancer diagnosis quiet back in 2017. “It was really hard. I kept it quiet when I was dealing with cancer because it was cervical cancer. It was a very personal cancer,” Andrews tells Popsugar. “I work with a lot of men. I didn’t want to be talking about the Ravens’s defense and my cervix at the dinner table.” But once she shared the news with her team at Fox and on “Dancing With the Stars” (she was hosting the show at the time), everyone was “so supportive.”
But now, almost 10 years later, Andrews is speaking out unapologetically and advocating for others to get checked for cancer as part of Aflac’s Check For Cancer campaign. After all, it was early detection that changed the trajectory of her experience with the disease. Without it, “it could have been much worse in my life. I mean, we could have been talking about really a different path here,” Andrews says.
Andrews was first diagnosed after a routine check up. “..[I] didn’t think anything of it. And then a couple of days later, I was sitting in a meeting room getting ready for week three of the NFL season, and my gynecologist called me and said, you have cancer and we need to do surgery immediately,” Andrews says. Looking back, she’s grateful to have had a mom that always encouraged her to keep up to date with routine doctor’s appointments. But in sharing her story with others, the reality is: “People just don’t go to the doctor,” Andrews says.
“We had had two losses before we had our son. So it’s been a real rollercoaster.”
Between the anxiety, fear of bad news, and lack of time, Andrews gets it all. But she hopes that in continuing to talk about her experience, people will put all that aside and prioritize their health. Once she did that and got a diagnosis, Andrews says she was able to address the other areas of her health that would be impacted by her cancer, like fertility.
“…My oncologist sat us down and just said, listen, now you’ve got to get serious about freezing your eggs because we don’t know we’re going to need really invasive surgery like a hysterectomy, or what kind of treatment you’re going to need,” Andrews says. While Andrews ultimately became a mother via surrogacy, she says the journey was and still is difficult.
“We just had a miscarriage in the spring. We had had two losses before we had our son. So it’s been a real rollercoaster. It’s again, not one I would recommend to people, but it’s real life,” she says.
Still, Andrews says she is grateful for where she is today. But it wouldn’t have felt nearly as supportive of an experience if she hadn’t opened up about her health struggles. “It’s hard to talk about your health. It’s hard to talk about it when it’s very personal,” Andrews says. “I’m not saying you have to go out there and blast it on social media that you’ve been diagnosed, but communicating with others, getting the information, and again, encouraging people in your lives to go get checked is so vital.”
These days, Andrews’s schedule is busier than ever with football season in full swing, an active 2-year-old, and a podcast – but she still makes time for her health, including workouts. Regular exercise is actually what helps her feel calm in the chaos. “I feel like working out is a big thing for me mentally. If I can sweat and I can just have some physical exertion on the treadmill and with some strength training, that means a lot too…today, I went to Barry’s Bootcamp and I ran my ass off and it felt so damn good,” she says. Another obsession lately: NAD injections. “I’m getting an IV tomorrow to check in with my body and just make sure I’m taking care of myself.”
It all part of an effort to manage the toll the job takes on her body. “Listen, it’s entertainment. It’s not like I’m curing cancer or saving lives, but it is high stress. It’s live television,” she says. “And I’m just trying to go easy on myself.”
Mercey Livingston is a writer and editor with eight-plus years of experience covering fitness, health, and nutrition for media outlets and brands including Well+Good, Shape, and Women’s Health. She was the fitness editor at Peloton and held editorial roles at Equinox, Shape, and Well+Good. Mercey is a NASM-certified personal trainer and women’s fitness specialist. She’s also a certified holistic health coach through the Institute For Integrative Nutrition, with an additional certification in hormone health. She has a BA in journalism from the University of Southern Mississippi
