How Danielle Fishel's Boy Meets World Family Supported Her Amid Her Breast Cancer Journey

In the wise words of Mr. Feeny, “If you search your heart and listen to its instruction, you won’t go wrong.”

And while many may feel lost as to the right way to support a friend diagnosed with cancer, Boy Meets World’s Will Friedle and Rider Strong knew the best way to be there for co-star Danielle Fishel in her breast cancer battle was to just show up.

“Will and Rider are truly just two of the best friends anyone could ever have,” the actress told E! News in an exclusive interview. “Will lives very close to me. So, Will and his wife Susan checked in on me constantly, offered to go to the grocery store for us.”

In fact, Danielle—who also hosts the Pod Meets World podcast with her two castmates—said she received well-wishes from “friends all over the world.”

“People know I like sweets,” she continued. “They’d send me cookies, or they sent us care packages. We got blankets. People who are cancer survivors who reached out to me and said, 'Here are going to be some things you're going to want. Here's a link to a supportive bra. Here's some’—all that different stuff was amazing.”

Another thing that was amazing was the email she got from Boy Meets World creator Michael Jacobs, which Danielle noted was “very kind and offered resources.”

“His wife has a nonprofit or is involved in a nonprofit,” the 43-year-old—who played Topanga Lawrence on the 90’s sitcom—explained, “and he said, ‘If there's anything we can do, connecting you to doctors for questions that you might have,’ and that meant a lot to me.”

Overall, Danielle is grateful for the outpouring of love she’s received.

“The response was overwhelming, and it was very warm,” she continued. “Will and Rider were the first two, truly, the first two people I told outside of my family.”

Danielle first learned of her stage zero breast cancer diagnosis in July while she was at a swim class for her 5-year-old son Adler and 3-year-old son Keaton.

“The phone rang, and I saw that it was my doctor,” she recalled. “And I thought, 'These are the results I've been looking for.' And so I answered the phone, and she said, 'Are you alone?' And the minute she asked if I was alone, I kind of knew I wasn't going to be getting, 'Hey, it's benign!'"

So, Danielle told her doctor to "just give it to me straight."

“She told me, and I said, 'I'm going to need you to text that to me,’” the Girl Meets World alum shared. “'Cause she said, 'You have ductal carcinoma in situ with possible microinvasion, high grade.' And I was like, 'I can't process all that. Text it to me, and then I'm going to need to Google it and then I'm going to need to start doing some research.'"

After taking some deep breaths, Danielle immediately thought about how she was going to break the news to her husband Jensen Karp.

"I waited that night until the kids had gone to bed and then I told him because he actually brought it up," she remembered. "He said, 'Still no results, huh?' And I said, 'Actually, I do have the results, and I have cancer.' It was a big gut punch. Both of his parents passed from cancer, and it was hard.”

Another tough moment came when she had to tell her parents about her diagnosis.

“I hadn't told them that I had even had an abnormal mammogram because I figured it was a non-story until it was a story,” Danielle noted. “So once I knew I had cancer, I told both of them. And managing or feeling like I was going to have to manage the emotions of others was the hardest part.”

“Hearing my parents cry, it was hard,” she added. “It’s a hard experience. And truthfully, it just makes me feel really good about being able to encourage other people to stay on top of it because not everybody is so lucky to find out they have cancer at such an early stage.”

In August, Danielle underwent a lumpectomy to remove a mass. After the pathology revealed there was still one margin her doctors "weren’t thrilled with,” she continued, she had a second surgery the following month.

“That pathology came back with no more evidence of cancer and all clear margins,” Danielle said. “So surgically, I am now done.”

But she isn’t done with treatment. Danielle told E! News she’s still deciding about radiation therapy, including whether to do it for the whole breast, targeted, combination or if she will undergo it at all. "Additionally, I will most likely be starting a hormone therapy, an estrogen blocker," she continued, "because my cancer was estrogen-positive, so it was feeding off of estrogen.”

As Danielle continues on her journey, she’s partnering with Aflac for October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month to advocate for preventive care and urge people to schedule their routine screenings.

“The Aflac Wellness Survey found that three in four people are really grateful that a friend or a family member encourages them to get tested,” she said. “And so you can consider me that friend or family member who's telling you, 'Please, if you have to find out you have cancer, which nobody wants to hear, try to find out about it when it's stage zero rather than anywhere past that.’”

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