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Soap opera actress Suzanne Rogers revealed this week that she has been diagnosed with cancer.
The “Days of Our Lives” actress, who has played Maggie Horton on the show for 52 years, told TV Insider that she was diagnosed with Stage II colorectal cancer after she felt something “wasn’t quite right.”
The 82-year-old said that she regularly gets colonoscopies, but her doctor ordered another one.
“He said, ‘I want you to have an MRI and I want you to have a PET scan and I’m going to do a biopsy,’” she said her doctor told her. “And the minute he said that I knew that it was something more.”
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She said after she went in for another procedure, her doctor told her: “‘You have cancer and you have to start treatment.’ It was all a shock. I mean, I think I was in a shock for several days because I take pretty good care of myself. But he said, ‘It’s a good thing you caught it in time.'”
She began treatment three days after wrapping the season of “Days of Our Lives” in June.
“It was radiation every day and chemo every day for six weeks, and it was tough,” she admitted. “It was tough knowing you had to do it five days a week, and then you had off Saturday and Sunday. I thoroughly enjoyed my weekends because I didn’t have to go to and see a doctor. I was so tired of seeing doctors.”
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Rogers said she was grateful for the show’s six-week hiatus over the summer because she didn’t have to go public with her diagnosis while she was undergoing treatment.
“I was able to keep it under wraps and then the show took that break, so it wasn’t necessary to get into it all then,” she said. “It helped me because it gave me even more time to chill and to get myself healthy.”
The show shoots 10 months ahead of when it airs, meaning that Rogers will be missing from some episodes next year.
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“My sister, who checks in with me two or three times a day, said there’s been some things on Facebook that said that I had retired and I had left the show, and none of that is true. I don’t want to upset anybody, but I want them to know what’s going on.”
Rogers’ onscreen daughter, Linsey Godfrey, who plays Sarah Horton, would sometimes accompany her to the hospital because Rogers doesn’t have family in Los Angeles.
“I had to have an infusion, and it takes about an hour and a half, so Linsey sat there with me and held my hand while I was having it,” she said. “We would go out to lunch or dinner with [fellow “Days of Our Lives” actor] Paul Telfer and Linsey’s daughter, Aleda. I knew I could count on them, so it was a lovely experience on and off the set. We really feel like a family.”
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She added that no one else on the show knew about her diagnosis.
“Nobody knew and then Linsey said, ‘Look, can I tell a few people, just to give you a call and say hi so you don’t feel like you’re so alone?'” she said. “Mary Beth [Evans] called. Stephen [Nichols] called me, and it was so lovely to get a call from him. And Greg Rikaart stayed in touch, as did AnnaLynne [McCord] and my makeup person at the show.”
She said the producers also told her to take care of herself and that her role would be there for her when she was healthy enough to return.
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Rogers completed her treatments at the end of July.
“I’m feeling really good,” she told TV Insider. “I start back to work next week, so we’ll see how that goes. Now, I’m feeling anxious like I do any time I get scripts because I want to do my very best and you don’t want to hold up anybody. So that’s the only anxiousness I feel. It’s not because of my illness, let’s put it that way.”
She said the biggest thing she’s struggled with in her recovery is tiredness.
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“I have a lot of energy all the time, so it really kind of shook me thinking, ‘Am I going to get my energy back?’” she said. “And it seems like it’s coming back. It’s not 100% yet, but I feel better. Today I feel really good, and that’s happening more and more than the other way around, so I’m really happy about that.”
Rogers also noted that she didn’t lose her hair during her treatments because she was taking chemo pills.
“I’m sure there’ll be people that are saying, ‘Well, she didn’t really have cancer,’ but you know what? I really don’t care what people say,” she admitted. “I know what I’ve gone through and I’ve come out on the other side, so that’s all I care about.”
She said her ordeal has helped give her perspective.
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“It’s so funny because I used to worry about some silly things, and when you go through this, it kind of takes you a while to say, ‘OK, well, this is what I have, and I will do my very best to fight it and to get through it,'” she said. “And that’s what I did. The prayers and the good wishes from my friends and my family helped me stay positive and stay on top of it and beat this.”
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