Sangita Patel says she had a 'breakdown' after cancer diagnosis: 'Holy s---, I could die'

Sangita Patel is reflecting on her journey with a rare form of thyroid cancer in a new interview for “Carry The Fire,” a podcast from the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation hosted by Canadian journalist Lisa LaFlamme. The Toronto-born television personality was diagnosed encapsulated angioinvasive oncoytic carcinoma in 2023. Although she's now cancer-free, she says she's only begun to heal emotionally from the life-changing diagnosis, surgeries and treatment.

Here's everything we learned from her conversation with LaFlamme.

A new perspective after cancer

Patel is a strong person, both physically and mentally. The former ET Canada host has cultivated an online presence filled with fitness, healthy recipes and positivity.

However, when LaFlamme asked the 46-year-old mother of two about her biggest takeaway from cancer, Patel had a surprising answer.

“That I’m allowed to be weak,” Patel said, adding that for her, weakness looks like “vulnerability.”

Despite the lesson, Patel said she’s still learning how to put it into practice.

Feeling the weight of her diagnosis

Patel was understandably nervous when the lump on her throat was biopsied and when she underwent surgery to have one side of her thyroid removed.

However, following the surgery, Patel's pathology report revealed that she had encapsulated angioinvasive oncoytic carcinoma, also known as Hürthle cell carcinoma, a form of thyroid cancer that can be more aggressive and potentially spread to the lungs or bones.

Patel said she understood that the pathology report was serious because her husband Samir, who works as a radiologist, was quiet when reading the results.

"It's bullshit. Like I was just like, I can't believe this is happening," Patel said. "I thought I've done my part. I'm healing. Life is good. I've done what I had to do.... And I'm like, what's wrong with me? What is happening right now?”

Patel and her family decided to retreat to Barbados following the official diagnosis. Although the trip was supposed to be restorative, she said she experienced a new emotional low point.

"I've never had a breakdown in my 45 years. I don't even know what happened. Something my daughter said. And we were at dinner, and I went back to our hotel room, and I had the ugly cry," she said. "I don't remember the last time I ever had an ugly cry like that. And my husband was there, and I'm thinking about death, and I'm thinking about everything, like just things I would never think about. I finally said, holy shit, I could die..."

Patel said her husband admitted that he had a similar breakdown after learning of her cancer, and said she was going to do more to see how Samir's feeling even now that she's cancer-free.

Groundbreaking surgery

Patel's surgeon, Dr. Jesse Pasternak of University Health Network in Toronto, removed the rest of her thyroid. For both surgeries, Pasternak used a cutting edge method called TOETVA (transoral endoscopic thyroidectomy-vestibular approach). TOETVA involves making incisions inside the mouth to access the thyroid, instead of accessing the gland through the neck, meaning there's no visible scarring. Pasternak is the only surgeon in Canada using the method, and although the surgery was successful, he ordered more treatment to help prevent future cancer recurrences.

"Radioactive iodine is an iodine pill that you take that has, instead of the regular iodine that we eat in our iodine salt, it's got a radioactive particle attached to it," he explained to LaFlamme. "Interestingly, only thyroid cells in the body use iodine, and so the iodine only goes to the thyroid cells, and then it basically explodes once it gets to those thyroid cells and kills the thyroid cell with it.”

Focusing on the future

While Patel is on the mend emotionally, she's focusing on new projects, including establishing a wellness brand, which she compared to Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop.

"Building my brand is what my goal is for the next few years. And I take it step by step. There's one thing I do is I definitely stay on my own journey," she said. I don't look to the left. I don't look to the right. I stay on my journey... .I don't even know how I got here, but it's partly because I stayed on my journey. And that's my next step is to actually explode internationally, to be in that space, knowing there's a whole world out there.”

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