On Friday, the 84-year-old actor announced that Jane Fonda had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and had begun chemotherapy. I shared the news in Instagram shareClarified that she is optimistic despite the diagnosis.
“This is a very treatable cancer. 80% of people live, so I feel very lucky,” she wrote.
She said she is coping well with chemotherapy so far and intends to continue with her responsibilities.
“I’ve been doing chemotherapy for 6 months and doing the treatments really well, and believe me, I wouldn’t allow any of this to interfere with my climatology,” Fonda said.
She also used the announcement as an opportunity to advocate for more equal and accessible health care in the United States
“I realized, painfully, that I was lucky in this,” Fonda said. “Almost every family in America has had to deal with cancer at one time or another, and a lot of them don’t get the quality health care I get and that just isn’t true.”
Fonda, a vociferous climate activist, has advocated a precautionary approach to cancer, writing that the United States must work to eliminate chemicals and pollution that can cause disease.
“We also need to talk more not just about treatments but about causes so we can eradicate them,” she said. “For example, people need to know that fossil fuels cause cancer. So do pesticides, many of which are based on fossil fuels, such as pesticides.”
Fonda said she is grateful to those around her during this new fight.
“Cancer is a teacher and I’m paying attention to the lessons it gives me,” she wrote. “The one thing that really showed me was the importance of community.”
This isn’t the actress’s first match with cancer – she was previously diagnosed breast cancerBut she said she was cancer-free in 2010.
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