It's been almost a year and a half since soap opera star Marcia Cross (ex-Tanya, Another World; ex-Liz Correll, The Edge of Night; ex-Kate Sanders, One Life to Live) was diagnosed with anal cancer, and now that the actress has a clean bill of health, she is opening up about her battle with the disease.
"I wanted to come forward because when I was ill, I read a lot of blogs online and cancer survivor stories, and a lot of people -- especially women -- were too embarrassed to say what kind of cancer they had," she shares in a video interview with People. "They had a lot of shame about it, and the doctors even were uncomfortable talking about the anus. And since I've gotten very comfortable talking about the anus, I thought, 'Okay, well, I think I could probably help by making a little dent in that stigma.'"
Cross shares that she didn't have any symptoms, but her doctors detected the cancer by being thorough and running tests that aren't always routine. She then underwent three months of intensive treatment and several more months of recovery before finding out she had a clean bill of health.
Unfortunately, this wasn't the only experience with cancer that Cross has had. Her husband, Tom Mahoney, is now healthy after receiving a throat cancer diagnosis back in 2009.
"What I really remember is my husband crying. And I was sort of numb, so I didn't feel anything," the actress shares of the moment she found out she was cancer free. "He had been through his own, so he was just 'being the man' the whole time. He never showed [any indication] that he was worried or anything. But then when that happened, I looked over, and that really blew me away."
Though Cross has been busy dealing with health issues recently, she's back to focusing her attention on acting. As Soap Central previously reported, Cross will be one of the leading faces of Jane the Novela, a spinoff of the CW's Jane the Virgin.
For more from Cross about her battle with anal cancer, check out her full People video interview. And for more information about anal cancer, visit www.analcancer.org.
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