Robin Quivers’ Cancer Scare: The Complete Story

September 9, 2013
Photo: The Howard Stern Show

People have been wondering why the fairer half of the Howard Stern Show hasn’t been in the studio for over a year, and today Robin finally revealed everything.

Here is the entire saga:

In May of 2012, Robin went down to Pittsburgh for a wedding and when she had to pee, she was completely unable to. She went to he doctor and they drained her bladder and said she was good to go, but when nature called again, she was unable to answer.

A growth the size of a grapefruit was impeding her flow. Nobody seemed to understand exactly what was going on inside Robin.

Things looked bleak: The doctors Robin was seeing told her that the best case scenario was that she’d survive the surgery, but her quality of life would be diminished, she may even have to use a bag for pee and a bag for “stool” for the rest of her life. Speaking of her life, the doctors were talking in terms of “prolonging” it not “saving” it.

Quality of Life is very important to Robin and she was adamant that a life like the one the doctors described was not acceptable to her.

Robin got emotional when she spoke about the conversation she had with Howard right after getting this “news” and Howard told her she could live with that if she had to. Howard needs her here. Robin said “before that conversation was over, I realized how much I meant to you. I started to consider living in ways I never thought I would because you loved me so much.”

“I gotta be honest,” Howard admitted. “I thought she was a goner.”

Then the first of many miracles happened. Robin met a woman named Dr. Carol Aghajanian at Memorial Sloan Kettering and Dr. David Agus from UCLA, who told Robin that they weren’t going to try to “prolong” her life. They were on a mission for a cure.

Robin’s Road to Recovery

“The Woman Loves Chemo!” – Howard Stern

Robin underwent a 12 hour surgery to remove the mass that had grown out of uterine tissue. She went in at 11 AM and woke up at midnight as they were wheeling her out. There was nobody there to inform Robin what had happened during the surgery, but since it had been a very long procedure, Robin had hope.

(The doctors told her beforehand that if they found the cancer had spread all over, they would have just closed her up and brought her out from under anesthesia. The long surgery indicated that there was work that could be done.)

They had removed the mass – along with a couple of lymph nodes – and the process of recovery began.

Howard visited his best friend in the hospital, bringing a basket full of chapstick and gum – two things the doctors said she’d need as she healed – and a self-portrait, which he placed right by her bed so he could watch over and heal her.

Robin began the rounds of radiation and chemotherapy that would attack the cancer – and which would usually have left the patient exhausted and weak.

Everyone knows that Robin Quivers triumphs at everything she touches, so it isn’t really a surprise that not only would chemotherapy work, but it would actually give the newswoman more energy and life than ever before.

“The woman loves chemo!” Howard exclaimed.

In fact, Robin was handling the chemotherapy so well that at one point a doctor asked her “Are you sure they’re turning on the machine?”

Through it all, Robin showed up to work almost every day (missing just three shows) and went out to dinner every night.

The only sign that the chemotherapy was doing anything was that Robin lost her trademark dreadlocks. Hair has returned to the beauty’s head but she’s still waiting on her eyelashes and eyebrows to fill in.

In order to cope the intense process of recovery, Robin and Howard took to cursing out people who were doing things that caused cancer – like smoking.

“F*ck them!” Robin would yell, though not at the person directly.

Robin thanked Howard, Fred, Gary and Ronnie for being amazing throughout the ordeal. Benjy tried to visit her too, but, as Robin put it, “I avoided him like the plague.”

Howard asked who was the least sweet to her during the whole thing and Robin named Richard Christy, who said that Robin was doing the show from home after Howard chastised his staff for not coming into work during Hurricane Sandy. “I wanted to kill him.”