It took Kathleen Petty some time to speak publicly about the health issue that kept her in Ottawa and put an end to her plans to move back to Calgary last year. All her listeners knew was that she was slated to leave CBC Ottawa Morning to host the Calgary Eyeopener, but during her final show, announced that medical reasons were going to keep her in Ottawa.

It took Kathleen Petty some time to speak publicly about the health issue that kept her in Ottawa and put an end to her plans to move back to Calgary last year. All her listeners knew was that she was slated to leave CBC Ottawa Morning to host the Calgary Eyeopener, but during her final show, announced that medical reasons were going to keep her in Ottawa.

Since then, the “ace interviewer” has traded 14-hour days for some time for herself. The Ottawa Citizen’s Shelley Page sat down with Petty for an interview about the breast cancer that has put her career on the backburner for now.

She told Page that she was initially not keen on giving interviews on her situation, as to not make herself out as something exceptional, when it is a cancer that affects so many women. Now, as Page says, Petty thinks it’s okay to “give voice” to a common experience.

Page asked how Petty would handle this situation as a journalist:

If she were interviewing herself about her cancer, what would she ask? She pauses before posing the question.

"I would ask, 'What is the most difficult part of this?'"

And then she answers: "It's not knowing what the outcome is going to be. I'm trying to manage that swing back and forth between pessimism and optimism, so I try to stay somewhere in the middle. But I find myself not willing to get too optimistic because I know the statistics."

Petty has received a positive prognosis from doctors. Read her full interview with The Citizen here.