Grace Helbig — a popular YouTuber and co-host of the podcast “This Might Get Weird” — shared Monday that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I have breast cancer,” Helbig said in a nearly eight-minute video uploaded to her YouTube account. “I know. It’s very shocking, it’s very surreal, it doesn’t sound real, but it’s real.”
The 37-year-old comedic personality said that she has “triple positive breast cancer,” and the doctors she’s spoken to have assured her that it’s “super treatable, it is highly beatable.” She said that at the moment, doctors believe her cancer is in stage 2A, but added, “We’re not entirely sure just yet.”
The former host of E! Network’s “The Grace Helbig Show” said she was diagnosed a month ago after going to her annual gynecologist appointment. Helbig said that a few months prior to the appointment, she had noticed a “weird lump in my left breast,” but she really had to push herself to bring it up to her doctor.
“Because I thought that I was a stupid little girl that didn’t know how girl bodies work, and it’s probably just muscle tissue,” Helbig said. “And thank God that I listened to that little voice inside of me that finally got the courage to bring it up to [my doctor], because she also thought it was abnormal.”
“So get those lumps checked!” Helbig stressed. “And do not be afraid to ask a doctor what you think is a stupid question.”
While most people diagnosed with breast cancer are over 50, about 9% of new cases are in women under age 45, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Protection.
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Throughout the rest of Helbig’s video, she cracks jokes about mammogram machines (because, honestly, who can’t poke fun at them?), the way she was told about her diagnosis, and how her husband ― Elliott Morgan, whom she married last year ― has to deal with the “in sickness and in health” bit of their vows earlier than he probably intended.
“I’m going to need comedy through this process,” Helbig said in her video. “Comedy, jokes, laughing, that all really helps me process very difficult things. And not from a place of denial or deflection about the reality, but rather from a place of aiding me through the hardship.”
Helbig also lamented the timing of her diagnosis, saying that in recent years she’s stepped back from content creation to find herself outside of being a “silly little persona in a box doing shenanigans.”
During her time away from YouTube, she got married and earned a graduate degree, she said.
“And this year, I started to feel really like myself again — but evolved,” Helbig said. “And I was really excited about the idea of starting to make content again from this healthier, more grounded place. And then I got breast cancer.”
Helbig said she would continue to make content when she can, and that she would work with her podcast co-host Mamrie Hart to keep on putting out episodes.
Helbig announced her breast cancer diagnosis on all of her social media accounts, and fans sent her support and love.
“I have breast cancer, you now know,” Helbig said in the conclusion of her announcement. “I’m doing OK. I was a hard few weeks after I found out, but I have the most amazing and supportive husband, family and friends, and I’m doing well. I’m ready to take this on, and I know I can take this on.”