Olivia Newton-John remembers Kelly Preston

Olivia Newton-John is living with stage four metastatic breast cancer. She was first diagnosed in 1992. The “Grease” actress has been very open about her cancer journey. She tells Yahoo Life that she’s spoken to her co-star John Travolta since the passing of his wife Kelly Preston, who died of breast cancer in July. “John is a dear friend and he’s chosen to stay private about the loss of Kelly which I totally respect,” Newton-John says. “Losing Kelly and other friends that I’ve lost in the past few months has really strengthened my resolve to fund and find kinder treatments for cancer.” The singer and activist has launched the Olivia Newton-John Foundation, which will fund the discovery of kinder therapies for cancer.

Video Transcript

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OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN: John is a dear friend and he's chosen to stay private about the loss of Kelly, which I totally respect. And, of course, I reach out to him. He's my dear friend and I feel so strongly and so sad for the family. Losing Kelly and other friends that I've lost in the past few months has really strengthened my resolve to fund and find kinder treatments for cancer.

That's my dream, because having been on this journey for 28 years now from the first time I had it to seven years ago when I had the re-occurrences. I've had chemotherapy and radiation and surgery and I've often wondered why we can't find kinder ways of treating our bodies and boosting our immune systems rather than poisoning them and knocking them down. That's why I'm starting this foundation and I'm very excited about it. To help all cancers not just breast cancer.

I'm very lucky that I'm married to a wonderful man called Amazon John. And he has a great knowledge of plant medicine. So I've had the opportunity to use a lot of plants in my healing and in my health. And particularly in this last seven years, he's been growing cannabis for me that has had a great benefit for me in my healing. It's helped me with pain, with sleep, with anxiety, with inflammation. Plants are such a wonderful gift to the planet. There are answers to everything in nature.

What I've learned from my husband is the value of using the whole plant-- not just part of it-- is where the therapeutics come. I think that this time that we have been at home a lot and having a chance to really look at our health, people are more interested in more natural things because you feel better on them.

People had cancer before COVID and they're going to be dealing with cancer after COVID, so I want to try and find these answers that people can heal from it and it can be treated like other diseases that were once considered terminal and now are not. But I want to do it in a natural way. So that's my dream and my plan.

Breast Cancer Month is this month and I always like to remind women to do regular breast self-examination, because the best judge of your body and what is going on is you. You know your body better than your doctor does who sees many women and doesn't see you very often. So you need to examine your breasts monthly because things come up and hopefully they'll go down. We get lumps and things when our hormones are changing. That's one of the most important things to do, is to be responsible for your own body. And if you feel something isn't right, then go get it checked. That's probably my best advice. If you haven't had cancer and hopefully you never will.

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