Susanna Reid opens up about mammogram after being reluctant to attend appointment

‘I was really resistant to it,’ reveals ‘GMB’ presenter

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Susanna Reid has opened up about recently attending a mammogram appointment after having been reluctant to go.

Speaking to co-host Ed Balls on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday (5 September), the TV presenter explained that she was encouraged to attend the appointment after Sarah Ferguson urged women to go to the test.

In June, Ferguson, 63, revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer following a routine mammogram screening.

She has since undergone a single mastectomy and urged women not to ignore their regular appointment reminders.

“I did go for a mammogram,” said Reid. “Do you remember we were talking about Sarah Ferguson and she had urged everybody to go and do it?

“I was really resistant to it and then there was a big a row wasn’t there that some health authorities weren’t sending regular reminders. I remembered that there had been a letter somewhere and so I did it.”

Reid’s co-host asked how she found the appointment.

“Do you know what? It was slightly stressful because our lovely editor Daniel drove me there and then I left my mobile phone in the car. And then I felt stressed because I didn’t have my mobile phone,” she replied.

“Then I had to go up to someone else in the waiting room to ask them if I could possibly send an email from their mobile phone to the programme secretary to see if she could contact... anyway the point I was completely distracted.

“Thank you Daniel for driving me to my mammogram. I went in and the nurse was absolutely lovely.”

Reid revealed that she had anticipated the scan to be worse than it was.

“It wasn’t the least bit painful or uncomfortable, I was expecting it to be far, far worse,” she said.

“The results came within a few weeks and it came back all clear.”

The comments come after Ferguson spoke out about how her mastectomy helped free her from self-hatred after years of being compared to Princess Diana.

Speaking on a recent episode of her podcast Tea Talks, Ferguson, suggested she had to have “a body part cut off” to “wake up”.

She told co-host Sarah Thomson: “Not because of seeing death, but waking up to stop worrying, stop self-hatred, stop self-doubt, stop all these things. Stop not liking yourself, really, please, honestly.

“Does it take that?... Yes, it did in my case. Honestly, it was so lucky. When I look back, [I think] OK. I’ve got good legs and look good.

“[I] didn’t like myself and that was because I think I was always compared to Diana and I think at the end I sort of believed my own press which is not too good.”

Ferguson added that getting a mammogram was “the greatest luck of my life” because it “saved her”.

“You’ve got an enormous scar, but you like yourself. You like yourself a lot,” the duchess said.