Terry Crews talks wife's early-COVID outbreak double mastectomy: 'It was really, really scary'
Terry Crews got candid — as Terry Crews does — when speaking to Whoopi Goldberg and The View cohosts about his wife Rebecca Crews's recent cancer battle. She underwent a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery just weeks before the nation's hospitals became overrun by patients suffering from the coronavirus and countless unrelated and non-essential surgeries were delayed.
"She is doing amazing. Right now she is 100 percent cancer-free," the Brooklyn Nine-Nine star and America's Got Talent host said Tuesday morning. "Can I tell you, 2020 has been hard, y'all. First of all, we've lost jobs, we've lost children, we've lost homes before. But this threat was the biggest threat we've ever faced."
In April, the gregarious actor told Yahoo Entertainment on our weekly Totally Normal Happy Hour Instagram Live series that he considers gratitude the key ingredient to happiness and success, and there was nothing he was more grateful than his wife's health.
"Two weeks before the whole COVID-19 [pandemic] shut down the world, it was determined [by] a doctor when my wife went and got a mammogram, they found [Stage 1 Breast Cancer]. And she got a double mastectomy," he told us (watch interview above, with discussion of his wife beginning at the 27-minute mark)
There was little hesitation on the behalf of Rebecca Crews, 54, even as news reports continued to sound the alarm about the severity of the oncoming virus's potential spread. She underwent successful surgery on March 3.
"My wife was just like, 'Let's do this. I want to attack it. I want to make sure I'm cancer-free. And that was scary man. It was really, really scary. And we sat back and we prayed and we just held hands. And I was so thankful.
"She was 100 percent cancer-free. And then the world shut down. But now here we are together, and I have the opportunity to be the nurse for my wife. … I've been the guy who's been washing her hair, taking care of her, making the dinner, doing the laundry, cleaning the house. And I'm thankful for that, because she's here. And she's cancer-free."
Terry Crews, a former professional football player whose other credits include The Expendables, Idiocracy and Everybody Hates Chris, and Rebecca Crews (a singer and actress, née Rebecca King) married in July, 1989. They have five children and one grandchild.
"I just thank God," Terry told us. "Every day I go, 'Man if I would've lost her, I don't know what I would've done.' So in the middle of all this, I'm thankful for my wife. And I'm thankful that she's here, that she's alive. And she's cancer-free and she's gonna live till she's 90 years old.
"It's perspective, man. It's truly perspective. You can take the jobs, you can take the stuff. We can get another job. We can get other stuff. But you don't get another life. … So that is the one thing I am truly the most grateful for."
