CNN’s Sara Sidner on Her Return to the Anchor Desk — and Why ‘I Thank Cancer’ (Exclusive)

Two days after she returned to the anchor desk following breast reconstruction surgery, Sara Sidner flubbed the name of a politician on the air — a name she knew but mispronounced in the moment.

In the past, that kind of small mistake would torment her for the rest of the day.

This time, however, “I put it to the side,” Sidner tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I try not to freak out about little things I used to ruminate over. It isn’t worth my health to stress myself out. You’ve got to live well.”

That’s one of the valuable lessons the veteran journalist learned since being diagnosed with breast cancer nearly two years ago. “It sounds wrong, but I thank cancer because it changed me,” says Sidner, 53, who returned as cohost of CNN News Central on Sept. 22, after more than two months away. “I was never good at self-care. Now I fight to take care of myself.”

Sidner was in a war zone October 2023, covering Israel’s unfolding conflict with Hamas, just after she was told that her mammogram was abnormal and that she’d need a biopsy when she returned to the U.S.

It turned out to be stage 3 breast cancer. As she underwent five months of chemo, a double mastectomy and five weeks of radiation, Sidner continued to work on air through her treatment. She saw herself as something of a soldier in her own battle. “I was trying to prove to the cancer cells that they were not going to beat me,” she says. “It was like, ‘I’m going to show you what I’m capable of.’ ”

And she was determined to publicly chronicle it, in much the same way she has told stories of conflict — and triumph — in her nearly three decades as a reporter.

She posted videos from her hospital bed after surgery and of radiation burns on her chest, and recently she showed off her surgery drains.  “I am incredibly private with my personal life,” she says. “But I thought, ‘Here is a chance for you to show what the experience is, and perhaps bring down some of the extreme anxiety and fear that one feels when they are going through this.’ ”

She’s also opened up about her struggles post-surgery, telling her followers in one recent post, “I didn’t recognize the girl in the mirror.” The girl she saw, she explains, was “struggling with mental health. But I also saw a girl who is capable of being resilient and determined to get through this, and to give myself permission not to be the quintessential perfect survivor where you’re always positive.”

Since finishing treatment last October, she’s confronted what she calls “the long tail of cancer”: sudden menopause, years of medication, and the terrifying knowledge that the disease could come back. “This disease is very sneaky,” she says. “I have met plenty of survivors whose cancer has returned. That is a heavy thing to have sitting in the back of your mind.”

At first, that thought prompted her to throw herself into every effort to keep cancer at bay. But she ended up exhausted: “You can’t treat it like a sprint. And you can’t even treat it like a marathon because there is no finish line. There’s no end. And when that starts to dawn on you, the mental toll of that is hard.”

Sidner says that in some ways, life after treatment has been harder than she expected. “I am better in a crisis,” she explained. “The quiet time leaves me in a state of sometimes panic, sometimes distress and tears.”

But “looking at it in a constructive way” has helped.  “If I allow myself to kvetch over every single thing that has happened since my diagnosis almost two years ago, I will curl into the ball and never function,” she says. “I have to look at this as cancer gave me more than it took away. Because I am a different person and understand the preciousness of this life in a way I could never have understood before diagnosis.”

Her own challenges have also given her a deeper understanding of her work. “You need to really consider what it feels like on the other end of the camera,” she says. “The way in which you ask questions is important. Bring compassion, bring empathy, bring understanding, bring genuine curiosity to the table every single time, no matter who you’re talking to. We must ask questions that are difficult to answer, but we don’t have to be a——- about it.”

And facing an existential threat like cancer has offered her personal perspective as well: “I’ve thought a lot about how to live so when your time is up, you can say, ‘I’ve lived my most authentic, beautiful life.’ ”

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