Erin Andrews is a couple minutes late to our Zoom chat. The veteran Fox Sports NFL sideline reporter was wrapping up her baby boy Mack’s two-year checkup with the pediatrician—which is apt, given we’re set to talk all about doctor’s visits. Andrews, who survived cervical cancer in 2016, is the national spokesperson for Aflac’s new “Check for Cancer” campaign, which encourages folks to prioritize routine checkups and screenings for early cancer detection.
Andrews is a fitting face for it, given it was a regular annual visit to her gyno that surfaced her cancer and ultimately saved her life. She had no symptoms (cervical cancer is notoriously sneaky) but fortunately never missed a doctor’s appointment and had scheduled a bunch of them, including the gyno, that summer, so she’d be all set before football season. When the doctor called to tell her about the cancer, and that she needed to get in for surgery ASAP, she was “floored, shocked, numb, inconsolable,” she says.
What came next was a whirlwind that she would only share publicly the following year: a surgery performed by her gyno that didn’t completely remove the cancer (“That was my first big lesson—I should’ve had it done by an oncologist,” she says), and then the search for an oncologist who could finish the job in the least invasive way, all without missing a single football game. The news that she was cancer-free after that second surgery was a huge relief. But it wasn’t the end of her health journey. Years later, Andrews would also reveal the nine rounds of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) she’d undergone in the attempt to have a child with her husband, former NHL player Jarret Stoll, and the “mental and emotional toll” it took on her. She and Stoll ultimately had their son via surrogate in June 2023.
But Andrews might not have been here to tell her story today, much less start a family, had it not been for that routine appointment. “Early detection was key for me because then we were able to treat it,” she says. Cervical cancer screenings allow physicians to spot and remove cancerous or even precancerous lesions (clusters of odd-looking cells that could one day become cancer). Alongside the advent of the vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV)—the bug behind most cases of the disease—it’s the reason this type of cancer is largely considered preventable. “You shouldn’t die of cervical cancer,” Andrews says.
And yet, cervical cancer is on the rise in women ages 30 to 44 (Andrews was 38 when she was diagnosed). Experts suspect millennials are less likely to have received the HPV vaccine (it was released when they were teens and wouldn’t have been included in their childhood regimen) and may be more likely to bypass gyno appointments amid the demands of life. Hence why Andrews is so eager to get people into their doctors’ offices for checkups, and to encourage them to learn all the cancer screenings they may be eligible for. (The Aflac campaign site includes American Cancer Society screening guidelines.) “I think for anything in terms of health care, you have to be your best advocate and look out for yourself,” she says. And to do that, “you need to get all the information you can.”
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