Herald Sun, December 2009
Marianne Betts
December 1, 2009
FRAN Drescher popped in to a Melbourne hospital yesterday to try to cheer up cancer patients.
Pancreatic cancer patient Tereza Pondeljak, 75, was taken aback to find that Drescher's trademark nasal New York twang, on show in her old television show The Nanny, was the real deal.
"You really sound like the television," the Coburg grandmother said.
"I do sound like the television, because who could make this (accent) up? I may as well figure out a way to make a living out of it," Drescher replied.
Drescher, who helped host Sunday's wedding of Geoff Edelsten to Brynne Gordon, was visiting the Royal Melbourne hospital as a women's health envoy for the US State Department.
A survivor of uterine cancer, she founded the Cancer Schmancer Movement and Foundation, dedicated to early detection and diagnosis of cancer.
"I'm a cancer survivor, and now I've dedicated my life to trying to help people with cancer, trying to get cancer recognised in the earliest, most curable stages, so that everybody has the best possible fighting chance," she said.
"I feel like I was lucky enough to live, so I have to make a difference. Maybe that's why I got to live. I feel like I got famous, I got cancer, and I lived to talk about it."
