And overcoming the disease.
Cobie Smulders played the independent female journalist in hit TV series, How I Met Your Mother and she is about to appear in the blockbuster movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron. Smulders is nailing it in Hollywood. But the Canadian actress hasn’t been without her battles to get where she is today.
The 33-year-old has opened up about being diagnosed with Ovarian cancer when she was 25 years old, during season three of How I Met Your Mother. Smulders has never spoken openly about it until now.
“I had tumors on both ovaries,” she said in an exclusive interview with Women’s Health Magazine.
Smulders told the mag that the cancer in her ovaries had spread in to her lymph nodes and surrounding tissues when it was discovered.
Over two years, the actress underwent a number of surgeries to remove the cancer. While she is looking glowingly healthy now she admits that she doesn't think she'll ever feel completely cancer-free.
"Now that I'm five years out, I'm trying to think of it as a positive thing and what can I learn from it. And if I can create more awareness, I'll do it," she told Women's Health Magazine.
We admire Smulders for speaking so openly and to help raise awareness.
Awareness of the symptoms of ovarian cancer is vital as early diagnosis vastly improves the survival of women diagnosed.
Smulders married her husband, Taran Killam, 33 in 2012 and the two had their first child together in 2010. This was when she was 27 years old and two years after her diagnosis. Smulders and Killam have two children together, a daughter Shaelyn, 5 and a three-month-old son.
How do you think celebrities can create awareness to bring change?
SCROLL THROUGH the gallery to see Cobie Smulders...
Want more? Try:
"Pierce Brosnan loses his daughter to ovarian cancer."
"SHARE: 6 myths about ovarian cancer and why they're wrong."
