Jane Fonda just received, in her words, the “best birthday present ever.” She is officially in remission. The 84-year-old actor, who will be 85 on December 21, first announced her non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis in September. She shared the positive news about her prognosis yesterday. “I can discontinue chemo,” she wrote in a blog post that she promoted on Instagram. “I am feeling so blessed, so fortunate.”
The Grace and Frankie star said the treatment had started to take a toll on her: “I’m especially happy because while my first four chemo treatments were rather easy for me, only a few days of being tired, the last chemo session was rough and lasted two weeks making it hard to accomplish much of anything.”
Lymphoma is a cancer of the lymph system, which is part of the immune system, per the US National Library of Medicine. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma occurs when white blood cells become abnormal. In a September blog post, Fonda joked, “So many people have written to me or posted that they have had this type of cancer and have been cancer-free for many decades. Well, I’ll soon be 85 so I won’t have to worry about ‘many decades.’ One will do just fine.”
This, unfortunately, wasn’t Fonda’s first experience with cancer. She publicly shared her breast cancer diagnosis in 2010, People reported, and she subsequently had a mastectomy. In 2018, Fonda also shared that she had a cancerous spot removed from her lip, according to Allure. “This is not my first encounter with cancer…I’ve come through well and I will do so again,” she wrote in the September blog post.
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Fonda has talked at length about how grateful she is for her medical care in recent months. In the Instagram post announcing her diagnosis, she said: “I’m also lucky because I have health insurance and access to the best doctors and treatments. I realize, and it’s painful, that I am privileged in this… Far too many don’t have access to the quality health care I am receiving and this is not right.”
She’s also been vocal about her thoughts on aging; she’s thankful for the privilege of growing older, despite the health issues she’s faced over the years. In an interview with CBS News earlier this year, Fonda, who has undergone multiple joint replacement surgeries, said: “My knees are not mine, my hips are not mine, my shoulder’s not mine…I mean, I’m almost 85. The fact that I’m still alive and working—who cares if I don’t have my old joints and I can’t ski or bike or run anymore?” She noted that, as cliché as it sounds, age really is just a number: “You know, you can be really old at 60, and you can be really young at 85.”
In her remission announcement, Fonda also thanked those who “sent good thoughts” her way, writing, “I am confident that it played a role in the good news.”
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Source: SELF
