Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/607197
Emmy-winning TV personality and Wisconsin native Sandra Lee talks with friend Christy Turlington Burns about her Midwestern roots, her diagnosis of and successful fight against cancer, and how her new Shades of Pink/Painted Pink campaign is helping increase awareness of this ravaging disease. PhoTogr aPhy By JiLL LoTenBerg STyLing, hair, and Mak euP By aLx g aL aSinao miracle worker Sandra Lee is widely known for her entrepreneurial success and her star turn as an Emmy Award – winning TV chef and cook- book author (and to a lesser degree, for a love of white, and her famous partner—Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York). Recently the Wisconsin native added another achievement, perhaps the most heart-wrenching one, to a life flled with them: breast cancer survivor. Following a routine mammogram in March of 2015, Lee was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ. As chronicled on her social media sites and, later, in interviews with Good Morning America, Lee opted frst for a lumpectomy, but followed it quickly with a double mastectomy. Unfortunately, there were complications, which entailed grueling surgeries and return bouts in the hospital. Four months after her diagnosis, she returned to GMA with good news. "I was early stage, and the beautiful thing about early-stage cancer… is it gives you every option in the world, and that is what I took," Lee told Robin Roberts, also a cancer survivor. "My doctors have said I am cancer-free and that I am ready to go." Since her diagnosis, Lee has become an ardent advocate for early breast cancer detection and treatment, and was named an ambassador for Stand Up to Cancer, a nonproft cofounded by Katie Couric that raises funds to speed up pioneering research into new treatments. On December 5, Lee will serve as ambassador for New York City's Miracle on Madison Avenue event, in partnership with Madison Avenue Business Improvement District. This well-attended occasion, now in its 29th year, raises funds to beneft pediatric cancer research and programs for The Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering. (Participating retail- ers on Madison Avenue give 20 percent of their profts on the frst Saturday of the holiday shopping season to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.) Here, in an exclusive interview, Lee talks to friend and maternal-health advocate Christy Turlington Burns about the event, what she learned from her ordeal with cancer, her Midwestern roots, and how her new Shades of Pink/Painted Pink campaign, created through the Sandra Lee Foundation, will help in her advocacy for early detection and honor women and their families whose lives have been impacted by the disease. michiganavemag.com 105