Suzanne Rogers is forever grateful to her Days of Our Lives family for supporting her during a serious health scare.
After discovering she had stage II colorectal cancer, Rogers, 82, quickly received help from friends, including Sunie Ostermann and her onscreen daughter Linsey Godfrey.
“It was scary,” Rogers told TV Insider in an interview published Thursday, October 30. “When I had to go see a doctor, one of them would go with me because you get to a point where once they say cancer, you don’t hear anything else.”
Rogers continued, “I had to have an infusion, and it takes about an hour and a half, so Linsey sat there with me and held my hand while I was having it. We would go out to lunch or dinner with Paul Telfer and Linsey’s daughter, Aleda. I knew I could count on them, so it was a lovely experience on and off the set. We really feel like a family.”
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While Rogers — who has played Maggie Horton on the Peacock soap opera for decades — tried to keep her diagnosis private, Godfrey, 37, politely asked if she could tell a few people in hopes they would offer support.
When Rogers agreed, the actress received even more encouragement from her Days of Our Lives family.
“Mary Beth [Evans] called. Stephen [Nichols] called me, and it was so lovely to get a call from him,” she recalled. “And Greg Rikaart stayed in touch, as did AnnaLynne [McCord] and my makeup person at the show.”
Rogers even received calls from producers who assured her nothing would happen to her character while she was going through treatment.
“They all said, ‘Don’t worry about a thing, take care of yourself, get yourself well. That’s the most important thing. We are here,’” Rogers recalled.
The actress wrapped filming Days of Our Lives on June 13 and began treatment three days later. She completed treatment on July 31 and is now making her way back to Salem.
With the show following its normal six-week hiatus in the summer, Rogers’ absence from the set will likely be less noticeable to viewers.
“I’m feeling really good. I start back to work next week, so we’ll see how that goes,” she shared in her latest interview. “Now, I’m feeling anxious like I do any time I get scripts because I want to do my very best, and you don’t want to hold up anybody. So that’s the only anxiousness I feel. It’s not because of my illness, let’s put it that way.”
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Looking forward, Rogers — who didn’t lose her hair during treatment — has a new sense of gratitude for life. Little things that once bothered her are now considered blessings.
“I used to worry about some silly things and when you go through this, it kind of takes you a while to say, ‘OK, well, this is what I have, and I will do my very best to fight it and to get through it.’ And that’s what I did,” she said. “The prayers and the good wishes from my friends and my family helped me stay positive and stay on top of it and beat this.”
Days of Our Lives streams exclusively on Peacock.
