When Giuliana Rancic was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2011, the E! News co-host “wanted to yell from a rooftop and cry and scream.”
Luckily her husband Bill was able to calm her down and devise a plan of attack. “He goes, ‘We’ve got to make a list and figure out the pros and cons of a lumpectomy with radiation and anti-estrogen therapy, and the pros and cons of a mastectomy,'” Giuliana tells the April issue of Glamour. “‘Let’s figure this out.'”
Bill, 40, admits it wasn’t easy seeing his wife go through treatment.
“As a husband and as a man, you wish you could trade places with your wife, but you can’t, and it sucks,” he says. “I of course had my moments. But you know, you’ve got to be strong; I would never break down in front of her. I wasn’t curled up in a fetal position in the shower, but there were moments when it was like, ‘It’s not fair. Why does she have to go through this?’ There was anger.”
Giuliana had a double mastectomy on December 13, followed by reconstructive surgery. Though it was initially hard to “look in the mirror,” the bubbly TV personality was more concerned about getting back in front of the cameras.
“I’ll be totally honest. While I was recovering, I was thinking, ‘I’m really going to be asking people what they’re wearing? I didn’t know if I could find the joy in it again. But it didn’t take long.”
When her co-workers first learned about her diagnosis, Giuliana had to remind them that it wasn’t a death sentence.
“It was like, ‘Hey, guys, cut the bullsh-t. I’m the exact same person I was before. I’m still shallow, I still love clothes, I still want to talk fashion ad I still want to gossip, so lay it on me,'” she tells Glamour. “They were like, ‘Thank God.'”
The experience helped put things in perspective for the Italian-born star.
“When I got my job at E!, I was the 39th person who auditioned. I wasn’t the prettiest, I wasn’t the smartest, I wasn’t the most talented. And I always wondered why I got the job,” Giuliana, 37, says. “Now I think God knew I wouldn’t be a selfish little cow with this platform, and I’d actually try to do something good with it.”
