Getty Images for Heifer International/Joe Scarnici(LOS ANGELES) — Actress Mindy Cohn revealed she had breast cancer, and that she kept her health battle private for the past five years, in a new interview with People magazine.
The Facts of Life star said she is currently in remission, but says she underwent a double mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation during the course of her recovery.
“I called my agent and said I had to stop working for at least a year,” Cohn, 51, told People. “I just dropped off the face of the earth.
I needed to be away and get better.”
Cohn said she recovered in part on the farm owned by her friends Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Dr. Brent Ridge, who appear in the reality show The Fabulous Beekman Boys.
Kilmer-Purcell and Ridge were there for Cohn “during the worst times,” she said. “My recovery included feeding 113 goats, feeding chickens, shoveling poop, working in the garden … I felt myself growing stronger.”
Cohn also spoke candidly about learning to reach out to friends for help.
“I needed to be vulnerable … I had to learn that asking for help is not me being weak,” she told the magazine. “It was hard to go through it alone.
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Cohn’s Facts of Life costar, Kim Fields, stopped by Good Morning America Wednesday, revealing that Cohn reached out to her after being diagnosed.
“She’s an amazing source of everything — of life, of strength, of peace, of beauty …certainly laughter, still,” Fields told GMA co-anchor Robin Roberts, herself a breast cancer survivor.
She added, “It was a blessing and an honor at a minimum to be there in any way she allowed.”
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