Joan Lunden’s ‘Warrior’ Fight Against Cancer

Joan Lunden is battling cancer head on after being diagnosed with breast cancer in June, and she’s channeling her “warrior mode” to win the fight.

The 64-year-old former “Good Morning America” host, who posed bald on the cover of People magazine and is now a special correspondent for “Today’s” “Pink Power” series, chatted with Billy Bush and Kit Hoover on Access Hollywood Live about her courageous journey.

“I didn’t break down and cry and have that kind of reaction. I really seriously went into this warrior mode [of], what do I have to learn, what do I have to do in order to have my best chance for survival,” she said of her first reaction to finding out she had breast cancer.

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Joan admitted to having a few moments where she feared for the worst following her diagnosis.

“For about five or 10 minutes I said, ‘Oh my God I have to get everything in order… I’ve gotta clean up everything,’ and then I just said, ‘Stop. You are not going there. You’re going to stay focused on what you can do to live. You are not going to focus on the possibility of dying,'” she recalled.

The mother of seven told Billy and Kit how she and husband Jeff told their children about the cancer.

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“One of them had had a birthmark that had been lasered off and my husband got the idea and he said, ‘You know how we’ve lasered that off and each time it’s gotten a little less and a little less? That’s what mommy is doing right now. She has something on the inside and she’s going to go and get this medicine and it’s going to make it go away a little bit more and a little bit more until it’s completely gone,'” she recalled.

Joan revealed that the choice to go without her wig on her recent People magazine cover was a family decision.

“In the beginning I was afraid [my kids] might be embarrassed in school or somebody might say something to them,” she told Billy and Kit. “I said [to them], ‘I can put the wig on do the picture and call it a day or I can make a decision that might not be so comfortable for me, but it has the potential of maybe saving lives. If I’m just brave enough to do that as long as you guys are okay and [my son’s] little hand shot up first and said, ‘Do it without the wig.’ And all of them said, ‘Absolutely, that’s the hero decision you gotta do it!'”

See Joan’s “Pink Power” segments on the “Today” show, as part of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

— Jesse Spero