State Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward will be the first to tell you that she was lucky her mammogram helped catch her breast cancer in the very early stages. Now she wants to make sure others do the same. Watch her interview with Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 reporter Jim Madalinsky in the video player above. “It doesn’t matter if you’re perfectly healthy. Perfectly healthy people, even if you run 20 miles a day, it just happens,” said State Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward (R) Westmoreland County. Ward’s diagnosis came last December, just weeks after she was named the first female Senate majority leader in Pennsylvania history.”When you get a diagnosis like that your mind goes into terribly dark places,” Ward said. Ward said her mammogram was about six months delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.Further testing found Ward had the BRCA gene which meant recurrence was a real possibility. That’s when she decided to make her fight public. Posting a video in June moments before her double mastectomy. “I wanted people to see that you can do this. This isn’t something that you can’t overcome,” Ward said. Now Ward is expanding that message and partnering with the Pennsylvania Breast Cancer Coalition. Public service announcements are scheduled to start airing next month for breast cancer awareness month, urging people to get checked out.Ward said this is her way of giving back after all the support she received over the past year.”It is a real community. Sharing experience, and it’s an honor and a privilege to maybe help someone. To help other women, a mom, like me a grandma,” she said.Ward said she is now cancer-free. Part of her partnership next month will also be teaming up for a mobile screening unit in central Pennsylvania, something she is hoping to expand to western Pennsylvania in the coming weeks.
WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Pa. —
State Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward will be the first to tell you that she was lucky her mammogram helped catch her breast cancer in the very early stages. Now she wants to make sure others do the same.
Watch her interview with Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 reporter Jim Madalinsky in the video player above.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re perfectly healthy. Perfectly healthy people, even if you run 20 miles a day, it just happens,” said State Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward (R) Westmoreland County.
Ward’s diagnosis came last December, just weeks after she was named the first female Senate majority leader in Pennsylvania history.
“When you get a diagnosis like that your mind goes into terribly dark places,” Ward said.
Ward said her mammogram was about six months delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Further testing found Ward had the BRCA gene which meant recurrence was a real possibility. That’s when she decided to make her fight public. Posting a video in June moments before her double mastectomy.
“I wanted people to see that you can do this. This isn’t something that you can’t overcome,” Ward said.
Now Ward is expanding that message and partnering with the Pennsylvania Breast Cancer Coalition.
Public service announcements are scheduled to start airing next month for breast cancer awareness month, urging people to get checked out.
Ward said this is her way of giving back after all the support she received over the past year.
“It is a real community. Sharing experience, and it’s an honor and a privilege to maybe help someone. To help other women, a mom, like me a grandma,” she said.
Ward said she is now cancer-free. Part of her partnership next month will also be teaming up for a mobile screening unit in central Pennsylvania, something she is hoping to expand to western Pennsylvania in the coming weeks.
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