Eyewitness News reporter Stacey Sager returns to work amid cancer journey
NEW YORK (WABC) -- Eyewitness News is celebrating a special homecoming on Tuesday as our friend and colleague Stacey Sager returns after her latest cancer battle.
This is her third time battling cancer and she has consistently been outspoken about what she has gone through and shared what those battles look like each and every time.
Sager said returning to work at Eyewitness News is like coming home and she is feeling hopeful.
"I'm through the bulk of my treatment and I'm on the back end of this at this point, I've gone through four months of chemo and 20 sessions of radiation and I took the summer to be with my family and get my daughter places she needed to go, and to start a new medication," Sager said.
The new medication is a targeted therapy for people with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations called Lynparza which aims to stop recurrence.
Being done with chemo and radiation marks the end of chapter one.
"What a lot of people really don't think about, and for most people who go through these cancers, there is the treatment after the treatment," Sager explained.
That can include maintenance therapy, oral chemo, tamoxifen or drugs like Lynparza.
"PARP inhibitors block DNA damage repair mechanisms, if a cell can't repair its DNA, it really can't survive, the reason these drugs can be used specifically in BRCA carriers is because they already have existing DNA damage repair deficiencies, which is a combination of those two, it's really taking advantage of the susceptibility of the cells," said Sager's physician Dr. Susan Domchek, executive director at Basser Center for BRCA.
Sager has already inspired others who have followed her journey and says she believes you have to embrace what is going on -- whatever it may be -- and live your truth while being honest with yourself.
That includes embracing her gray hair -- even as others ask when she will color it.
"I think it's important to embrace wherever you're at and be happy with wherever you're at and if I can do that I'm usually happier," Sager said. "Because if I'm wondering where I'm going to be next week or next month or what I don't have right now, that's not a really fun place to be."
Sager says the general public and people who have not had to go through cancer don't realize that the drugs all have side effects and toxicities and a patient's cancer journey doesn't end the day they ring the bell -- it is just the end of a chapter.
Sager documented her journey in the Eyewitness News special "3 Decades, 3 Cancers."
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