Danielle Fishel’s cancer battle inspired her to compete on Dancing with the Stars.
Danielle Fishel was diagnosed with cancer in 2024
The 44-year-old actress was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2024, and after undergoing treatment, Danielle started to look at life in an entirely new way.
She told People: “The minute I was done with my cancer treatment, I thought to myself, ‘If this has shown me anything, it has shown me that I am not experiencing enough joy in my life.'”
Danielle is now determined to have more “fun” in her day-to-day life.
The actress – who is best known for playing Topanga Lawrence in Boy Meets World – said: “I’m going through every day, performing tasks and being there for my family and being there for work. Where’s the fun?
“When they asked me to do this, I was like, ‘This is the perfect way to cap it off.'”
Danielle previously admitted that her cancer diagnosis consumed her entire life at one point in time.
The actress actually found it hard to focus on anything else amid her treatment.
She told People last year: “It’s like, ‘Wow. Even for cancer that was found at stage zero, my whole life has changed’.
“My life has become many doctor’s appointments and constantly checking up. And it’ll be monitoring side effects.
“It’s not fun, but it is what it is. And with all that said, I’m very fortunate and I’m going to live, which is the most important thing.”
Danielle is also determined to encourage other people to pay closer attention to their own health.
She said: “When I was trying to make the decision about whether or not I wanted to talk about it publicly, my first instinct was to just keep it quiet, not tell anybody and just get through it. Suffer through it alone.
“But it was like, okay, I have the ability to go out there and tell a large amount of people that had it not been for me being so on top of my yearly check-up, I may not have found this.
“Had I said, ‘I did my mammogram last year, I was totally fine. What are the odds that in one year I’m going to have anything? I’ll be fine. I’ll put it off,’ it could have been much worse for me.”