The star of “The Nanny” moved beyond the small screen and onto Georgetown’s Gonda Theater stage Tuesday evening.

Fran Drescher, actress and cancer survivor, addressed students and faculty about her battle with cancer, her charity work to raise awareness and her political struggle to fight cancer in the United States.

Drescher, who starred in “The Nanny” from 1993-1999, was diagnosed in 2000 with uterine cancer but has since undergone a hysterectomy and has now fully recovered. She launched the Cancer Schmancer movement on June 21 — the seventh anniversary of her wellness — to promote the diagnosis of cancer in Stage I, when it is most curable.

It took two years and eight doctors for Drescher to be given the correct diagnosis of uterine cancer, she said. Drescher said that she was misdiagnosed, despite having “the exact symptoms of uterine cancer.”

“I felt betrayed by my body … betrayed by the medical community,” she said.

Drescher said that her story is a common one among women with gynecological cancers. The medical community, she said, is so burdened by insurance companies, that they often miss important signs of illness.

Drescher chronicled her story in the 2002 book “Cancer Schmancer.” While she was on her book tour for “Cancer Schmancer,” Drescher said she decided to effect change through the political system.

Drescher was a leading advocate of the Gynecologic Cancer Education and Awareness Act, which became law on Jan. 12. The law authorizes $16.5 million over three years to the Department of Health and Human Services to educate U.S. women and health care professionals about the symptoms of ovarian and other gynecologic cancers.

If women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer in its early stages, approximately 93 percent survive longer than five years, while approximately 20 percent survive if the cancer is diagnosed in later stages, according to the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance.

It is “very gratifying that I am able to change pain into purpose,” Drescher said. “At all costs, we must keep the women healthy and alive.”

Drescher stressed the need to remain positive through stressful situations. She said we often get “mired in bitterness,” but “what we have today we have to be grateful for.” Drescher was raped at gunpoint in 1985, and this experience helped shape her outlook on life, she said. Since she never had children, Drescher has frozen her ovaries with the hope that she may still be able to one day become a mother.

Drescher said that she and her movement are “leading a trail-blaze of change,” but need help from many others to succeed.

She urged the audience to make “healthcare a priority issue in the next election,” and she advised students against focusing solely on the war in Iraq.

Drescher was recently asked to run for Congress in 2008; however, she declined the position because, she said, “I have to get [the] Cancer Schmancer movement going.” Drescher said that she may consider running for the Senate at some future point.

This summer, the State Department named Drescher the special envoy for women’s gynecologic health issues to speak to women in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and less-developed nations about prevention and education of women’s cancers.

Drescher was in D.C. this week to meet with government officials about women’s health.

This event was sponsored by the School of Nursing and Health Studies’ McAuley Lecture Series.