Although The Nanny remains beloved over 20 years since it went off the air, it encompasses only a fraction of what its star Fran Drescher has done throughout her time in the public eye.
And unfortunately, some of her most important work has been undertaken as the result of a frustrating and scary time in her life.
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But Drescher has remained focused on turning her negative experience into a positive change and on this day of great personal importance for her, she has more reason to celebrate than ever.
For Drescher, May 6 of this year marks the 21st anniversary of the day that she first became officially cancer-free.
According to People , she celebrated this encouraging milestone with an appearance on the magazine’s People Every Day podcast, saying, “It’s been an amazing journey and I have learned tremendous life lessons and experienced incredible silver linings as a result of this experience.”
Drescher was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 1999 and was saved by a radical hysterectomy the following year, but one of her biggest struggles came from securing that diagnosis in the first place.
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As she shared in an interview with HealthyWomen , it took her two years of advocating for herself to eight different doctors before one was finally convinced to give her an endometrial biopsy.
The rest believed that she was too young to be likely candidate for uterine cancer and prescribed a total of four rounds of hormone replacement therapy because they thought she was perimenopausal.
As she said, “I realized that doctors are so bludgeoned by big business health insurance to go the least expensive route of diagnostic testing […] This could cost you your life.”
She was in stage one of a slowly-developing cancer by the time the eighth doctor caught it, but she believes it would have been a much different story if she had ovarian cancer.
As ET Canada reported , such concerns led her to found the advocacy organization known as Cancer Schmancer, which was named after the book in which Drescher first detailed her experiences.
In her statement featured on the group’s website, she wrote, “I got famous, then I got cancer, and now I live to talk about it. Sometimes the best gifts come in the ugliest packages. Please lock elbows with me and join the Cancer Schmancer Movement so together we can do what needs to be done, so fewer of us will die prematurely.”
