Kelly Hyland, who stars in the Lifetime reality show Dance Moms, has announced that she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The former reality star recently spoke with E! News about what it was like to find out that something was wrong and the warning signs that convinced her to go to the doctor.
“The first red flag was my significant weight loss,” the mother of three told the outlet. “I lost enough that others noticed and would ask for my dieting hacks, but there was nothing I had changed in my day-to-day to cause the loss.”
Then in March of this year, she noticed a lump on her breasts, which immediately led her to book an appointment for a mammogram, despite already having one under a year ago.
“I had just had one done eight months prior and the results came back clean. However, this new mammogram and sonogram did not, it came back showing a mass,” Hyland said.
After having the mass biopsied, it was confirmed that it was malignant and her official diagnosis was an invasive carcinoma stage 1, grade 3, which according to the American Cancer Society means the cancer is likely to spread fast.
“I went from clean results to a malignant mass in eight months,” Hyland said. “I was shocked that it had grown that quickly and scared of the battle I knew I was about to face.”
Despite her wish to tell her three children the news in person, with her being located in Florida and her children in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Hyland knew she would have to go about calling them instead.
“I did a four-way call with all of my kids because I wanted to tell them at the same time and make sure they were all given the same information,” she said, noting that “it was a very hard conversation”.
Her youngest daughter, 23-year-old Paige, told E! News that she was quick to assume that something was very wrong when her mother asked her and all of her siblings to jump on the phone.
“I had an instant gut feeling something was off,” she told the outlet. “As soon as she told us the bad news, I felt like I was in shock and then quickly hit with a whirlwind of emotions. Not only was I scared, I was angry, sad, and confused why this would happen to someone as amazing as my mother.”
Paige added that her grandmother had died of cancer, so she had a vague idea of what her mother would be going through.
“We lost my Nana to cancer in 2019,” she said. “So I understood the long road we had ahead of us and it pained me to imagine my mother having to endure that same feeling.”
Hyland’s only son, 25-year-old Josh, said he is optimistic that his mother will pull through. “I feel very hopeful that it is only at stage one, I feel like she caught it quickly,” he said. “I know my mom is strong enough to get through this.”
Currently, the former reality star has had two out of six chemotherapy treatments, which will be followed by surgery, radiation, and then 11 more treatments. Hyland said: “I have a long journey ahead.”
