Fighting ovarian cancer with HIMYM’s Cobie Smulders

News 11 spoke with actress Cobie Smulders on the battle with recurrent ovarian cancer and how you can take charge by joining the ‘Not On My Watch’ campaign.

You may know her as Robin Scherbatsky on How I Met Your Mother, but the famous actress is working on another project that could potentially help millions of women across the world.

Smulders was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the age of 25 and has been in remission for almost 11 years. The campaign’s efforts are to encourage women to embrace the battle, instead of being afraid.

“We partnered with Tesaro to start the Not On My Watch campaign which is basically empowering women who have recurrent ovarian cancer to no longer watch and wait to see what happens. We want women to be educated like you said, we want women to feel empowered, to feel in control of their diagnosis,” said Smulders when asked how the campaign is influencing women to join the campaign.

Smulders said her cancer was diagnosed at an early stage and encourages women to know all that is available to them if they encounter themselves feeling afraid.

“This is why this cause is so near and dear to my heart is that I am a survivor, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when I was 25-years-old, very early and luckily I discovered my cancer at an early stage and was able to have surgery. Now 11 years later I am cancer free. So as a cancer survivor I really want to help the cancer community to try and be an inspiration for women, who are newly diagnosed who are going through this battle, that I know unfortunately so well, and to show women that you can survive and that you should educate yourself as much as possible and know all of your options and really be kind to yourself.”

To learn more about the campaign click here.