 |
. |
As the 37-year-old E! host chooses a double mastectomy, Giuliana Rancic and husband Bill Rancic open up to PEOPLE in this week's issue about continuing IVF and finding hope after heartbreak. The reality star thought she had beat cancer easily – only to be faced with a devastating diagnosis. Now Giuliana and Bill talk about the battle ahead. After days spent grinning through celebrity interviews on the red carpet, playfully bantering with colleague Ryan Seacrest and dissecting stars' fashion choices, Giuliana Rancic was getting ready for bed in Los Angeles when reality finally hit. In less than two weeks she would be losing both her breasts in a double mastectomy. "I started crying, and Bill pulled me into bed and was holding me," she says of her husband of four years. "I didn't think the surgery was really ever going to come." Nor could she absorb the hard truth that the breast cancer she'd been diagnosed with almost three months earlier had not vanished, despite a double lumpectomy performed just two months ago. "I thought it was going to disappear," Giuliana admits. "It was embarrassing to say out loud, because what fool would think it would disappear? But I kept saying it in my head and crying." After breaking down that night, she summoned her resolve. "I said to Bill," she recalls, "I'm really ready to do this." Now, as she heads into what she plainly calls "the fight of my life" in the wake of her shocking cancer diagnosis, Giuliana is steeling herself to
undergo a bilateral mastectomy, followed by reconstructive surgery on Dec. 13. Facing the radical procedure, "am I scared? Absolutely," confesses the TV personality, who arrived at her decision after learning that cancer in her right breast remained. (The disease was "in the early stages and had not spread," says Bill.) The operation caps a hugely challenging year for the couple, who have documented their three-year struggle with infertility — during which the cancer was discovered — and a heartbreaking miscarriage last year on their Style Network reality series Giuliana & Bill. "Bill and I said, when you strip it all down, it comes down to, do you want to live? And yeah, I do," she says. Read Full: Giuliana Rancic Opens Up About Her Upcoming Battle With Cancer - Starpulse.com
