Indianapolis TV Anchor Tanya Spencer Dead at 53: Her Final Social Media Post Issued a Stern Warning

Tanya Spencer

Former TV anchor Tanya Spencer from Indiana died from cancer at the age of 53. But before her death, she took to social media to share a poignant and thought-provoking warning about life.

Spencer, whose real name is Tanya Sumner, left an impactful message on Facebook before she died on Friday, May 24 in her home from an aggressive cancer that started in her colon.

She emphasized what she found to be most important in life, telling friends and family, “Time. Good health. Those are our only true commodities. Our only true currencies that matter,” as shared by her former workplace, WRTV Indianapolis.

Throughout her fight against the intense cancer, Spencer advocated for people to get their colonoscopies as directed. She shared that she had waited to go through the procedure not knowing that the CDC lowered the recommended age to get a colonoscopy from 50 to 45 in 2021.

Speaking candidly with WRTV last fall, Spencer said of the procedure, “Yeah it’s uncomfortable, it’s unpleasant. No one wants a colonoscopy but get the thing. Get it at 45.”

“If you could imagine me finding this grapefruit size tumor 6 years earlier–we would be having a different conversation,” she continued.

The former TV anchor, who later became a local politician, serving District 3 on the Whitestown Town Council, found her cancer while going through an emergency surgery in late 2022.

Chemotherapy didn’t help and the cancer eventually spread to her abdomen, with Spencer revealing in her news interview last year that she had a rare KRAS G12C genetic mutation that caused the cancer to be “very aggressive, very fast growing.”

Spencer’s close friends stayed by her side and advocated for her throughout her cancer treatment. Before her death, she was taking two medicines not covered by insurance, and her friends began a GoFundMe to help alleviate the economic costs of the treatment.

In her TV interview, Spencer touched on what her friends’ support meant to her, saying, “They’ve been my advocates. They’ve lifted me up.”

Spencer is survived by her husband and the couple’s teenage child.

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