YouTuber Grace Helbig has been diagnosed with breast cancer. In a seven-minute-long video shared to the nearly three million subscribers on her channel, Helbig expressed optimism about her medical team’s proposed treatment plans. In the video, she said she received her official diagnosis more than a month ago, but only just decided how to share the news with the online audience she’s been sharing content with for more than 15 years.
“It’s called triple-positive breast cancer and from every doctor or medical professional or person that has any knowledge about cancer, they have said it is super treatable, it is highly beatable. We are going for cure, not remission here, which is exciting, encouraging, helpful, good,” Helbig shared. “So the treatment plan looks like six rounds of chemotherapy, followed by a surgery, followed by hormonal therapy. It’s a very clear treatment plan, which is very helpful for me.”
She added: “I even got my port placement in my arm yesterday, which is basically like a little Nano Pet-looking device that they embed in the skin under your arm so that when you start chemo, you can just be hooked up to the machine, like a little Roomba and a charging station. So, cute. Which obviously made this process much more real, which made me much more eager to tell you.”
In her video, Helbig said that she felt an abnormal mass in her left breast during a recent appointment with her gynecologist, but admitted she was reluctant to make a big deal out of it. “I really had to talk myself into bringing it up to her in the appointment because I thought that I was just a stupid little girl that didn’t know how girl bodies worked, and it’s probably just muscle tissue,” she explained. “Thank God I listened to that little voice inside of me that finally got the courage to bring it up to her.”
And while she mentioned that she has often found it hard to take care of herself, or allow others to help her, she has a strong support system, including her husband, comedian and YouTuber Elliot Morgan. “Elliot and I got married last fall and I really cashed in on the ‘in sickness and in health’ part of our vows, I think, way quicker than he expected,” she joked.
Helbig said she has also confided in fellow YouTuber Hank Green, who revealed in May that he had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer. “I have been texting with him and his videos have been so incredibly helpful. And I am now eagerly awaiting his cancer stand up to read through which he has promised to send me, because I’m going to need comedy through this process,” she added. “Comedy, jokes, laughing — that all really helps me process very difficult things and not from a place of denial or deflection. About the reality, but rather from a place of aiding me through the hard shit. Laughing feels like it helps me breathe within a situation that I feel like I’m holding my breath.”