Rachel Maddow undergoes surgery for skin cancer, urges others to ‘get checked’

Maddow revealed the news on her primetime politics show

Rachel Maddow has revealed that she has undergone surgery for skin cancer.

The TV host announced the news on her MSNBC programme, The Rachel Maddow Show, by telling her audience she wanted “to address a quick personal matter”.

Maddow disclosed that she had been away from the show for a few days because she had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous mole on her neck.

The host went on to urge her viewers to be vigilant with regards to changes in their bodies: “I want to use this moment to tell you something, which is: you should get checked. If you’ve got moles like I do, just get on a schedule with your doctor.”

Maddow also said that her neck was still bandaged from the procedure.

She then went on to describe the process of finding out she had cancer, saying it was her partner, Susan Mikola, who first noticed the changes in the mole: “She said ‘No, that mole has changed. We’ve been together 22 years that mole has changed, I know it.’”

After her hairstylist also noticed a change, Maddow went to a doctor: “I did a biopsy, turns out it was skin cancer. Skin cancer accounts for the vast majority of cancers diagnosed in the United States. They got it, they got all of it. I’m good, I have clear margins and everything.”

“Even the skin cancers that are the deadliest skin cancers in this country — those too — are way more treatable than they used to be,” Maddow said. “On one condition: That you get them early.”

Maddow concluded that she was going to be “absolutely fine” and added that people who have suspicions about changes in their bodies should not “blow it off”.