Radio personality Robin Quivers has quietly battled cancer for months, but had happy news to share with "Howard Stern" listeners in September 2013. On the show, Quivers revealed that her doctors now believe she's cancer-free, after receiving treatment, including chemotherapy. Quivers is one of several stars who has battled cancer or been affected by the disease.
Singer Melissa Etheridge became an advocate for the use of medical marijuana after her 2004 breast cancer diagnosis.
Sharon Jones, performing here in 2011, held off plans to tour and release a new album with the Dap-Kings after being diagnosed with stage 1 bile duct cancer.
Michael Douglas offers some interesting insight as to how he may have developed the throat cancer that he was diagnosed with in August 2010. Douglas later told the "Today" show that his tumor was gone.
Buffalo Bills Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly has been diagnosed with cancer of the upper jaw bone. "Doctors have told me that the prognosis for my recovery is very good," Kelly said in a statement from his former club.
Actress Christina Applegate had a bilateral mastectomy in 2008. Doctors had diagnosed her with cancer in her left breast and offered her the options of either radiation treatment and testing for the rest of her life or removal of both breasts.
In 2006, singer Sheryl Crow underwent minimally invasive surgery for breast cancer. In 2012, she revealed she had a noncancerous brain tumor.
KISS band member Peter Criss sat down with CNN's Elizabeth Cohen in 2009, a year after his battle with breast cancer. The musician said he wanted to increase awareness of the fact that men can also get the disease.
Cynthia Nixon not only joined the cast of Showtime's "The Big C," about a woman battling the disease, and portrayed a woman with cancer in the Broadway play "Wit" -- Nixon was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006.
Zoraida Sambolin was diagnosed with breast cancer on April 9, and has chosen to have a double mastectomy. "Angelina empowered me to share my story," she writes for CNN.
"Good Morning America" co-host Robin Roberts had been cancer-free for five years in 2012 after beating breast cancer when she revealed she had been diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, also called MDS.
"Three's Company" star Suzanne Somers spoke with CNN's Piers Morgan in 2012 about her stem cell surgery and her bout with breast cancer. She was diagnosed in 2001, which is when she began researching alternative methods to reconstructive surgery.
Olivia Newton-John was diagnosed in 1992, and the singer has become an advocate for breast self-examination.
E! co-host Giuliana Rancic underwent a double mastectomy in 2011 after a breast cancer diagnosis.
Actress Kathy Bates didn't share news of her battle until 2012, eight years after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Australian singer Kylie Minogue was only 36 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005.
- Quivers kept her cancer diagnosis secret for over a year
- She's been working her Stern gig from home
- Quivers says doctors tell her she is now cancer-free
(CNN) -- Robin Quivers, Howard Stern's radio program sidekick, revealed Monday that she has battled cancer for the past year.
The revelation came following a question from a caller about when Quivers would be returning to the studio. She has been working her gig from home since May of last year.
Stern explained that right before her last day in the studio, Quivers had been attending a wedding in Pittsburgh and found she was unable to urinate. A quick trip to the emergency room, where her bladder was drained using a catheter, didn't fix the problem, Stern said.
"Do you want to fill the audience in on what happened since then so that they understand why you haven't been in the studio?" Stern asked Quivers during Monday's show.
Quivers replied, "Sure. I'm ready to talk about it now, I guess. Yeah, so I went to a doctor that afternoon and for about a week the story was that nobody really understood what was going on. They knew that there was a mass in my pelvis but nobody knew what it was, and eventually it was determined that I just had to have surgery and they'd figure it out after going in."
Quivers said she endured 12 hours of surgery after returning home to New York City. The mass turned out to be cancerous and involved uterine tissue migrating outside her uterus, she said.
"The tumor was about the size of a grapefruit," she said. "There were two reasons that the operation was so long. It took eight hours to remove the tumor because it was so huge, it was lying on all the organs in my pelvis, and they literally had to scrape it off when they got to it. But also, they couldn't even figure out how to operate 'cause it was so massive."
Stern, who at times sounded emotional, said he was worried that his friend and cohort of many years would not survive.
"I was already making funeral arrangements," he said. "Not to make light of this situation, but I was freaking out. It was just this f***ing crazy thing that came out of left field and it was going down real quick."
But the story has what Stern called a "miraculous" ending.
After undergoing treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering -- which included chemotherapy and an ileostomy, a surgical procedure to allow intestinal waste to pass out of the body through an opening in the skin and into a pouch -- Quivers said doctors told her three and a half months ago that she is now cancer-free.
"(The doctor) just looks at everything and she goes, 'You're cured. You're done. You can just leave here. You know, the protocol is to scan you every three months and do all this stuff, but we don't really have to, because you're cured,'" Quivers said.
Stern, who Quivers said supported her through her illness, said he was overjoyed with the outcome.
"I can't tell you when you see a friend, a life-long friend, going through this, what it's like," Stern said. "I'll be honest. I thought she was a goner. You bet against anybody else except Robin."
