Danielle Fishel is opening up about her decision to withhold her breast cancer diagnosis from her sons.
The Boy Meets World alum, who shares Adler, 5, and Keaton, 3, with her husband Jensen Karp, said she couldn’t handle the thought of her kids worrying that she would die.
“It was hard for me to have to tell my husband,” Fishel explained on the Sunday, October 20, episode of the “Amy & T.J.” podcast hosted by Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes. “Both of his parents passed. His mom died in 2022 from lung cancer and she lived with us while she was going through chemo and her cancer treatment. My oldest son Adler was 3 when she passed and he was very close to her.”
“One of my big concerns was would he ask, ‘Where did Grandma go? Why is Grandma not here anymore?’ My big concern was that if we tell him that she was sick, he’s gonna think the next time he gets a cold that he’s gonna die,” Fishel explained. “Or that the next time Mommy or Daddy is sick, he’s gonna think we’re gonna die. So I wanted to be honest with him about the fact that she had cancer and that cancer doesn’t always mean that you die, but sometimes it does. And in Grandma’s case, that’s what it was.”
Fishel said that when she was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ in July, she decided not to tell Adler and Keaton about her illness. The actress has since undergone two lumpectomy procedures to successfully remove the cancer.
“So when I was diagnosed, my fear was that I’m normally so honest with my kids but I can’t tell them I have cancer. I can’t handle that possibility that they’re gonna worry about me in that way,” the actress said. “So they don’t know that I had cancer, but they do know that I had a boo-boo that I had surgically removed from my body and they needed to be gentle with me. I told them I love our bear hugs and I love wrestling with you, but my boo-boo means that I need to be gentle.”
Since recovering from her surgeries, Fishel is now able to rough-house with her boys, she said.
“When I was able to wrestle with them and swing them around, Adler stopped and he said, ‘Mommy, is your boo-boo all better?’ and I was so happy to tell him that, yes, my boo-boo was all better,” she said.
Fishel announced her diagnosis during an August episode of her podcast, “Pod Meets World,” which she cohosts with former Boy Meets World costars Will Friedle and Rider Strong.
“I was recently diagnosed with DCIS, which stands for ductal carcinoma in situ, which is a form of breast cancer,” Fishel said at the time. “It is very, very, very early. It’s technically stage zero. To be specific, just because I like too much information all the time, I was diagnosed with high-grade DCIS with microinvasion.”
