Dawson’s Creek actor Busy Philipps, 47, has revealed that she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
In an interview with People, Philipps said the last six months had been the “weirdest” of her entire life, and it all started when she decided to get a full-body MRI.
“I didn’t know why I wanted to get this scan except for the fact that I just did,” she explained, adding that she’d read about it on Instagram.
Even though she hadn’t experienced any symptoms that would have made her suspect a brain tumor, doctors discovered a lesion on her brain and later confirmed that she had a tumor.
“This is a real tumor, and it’s inside your brain. And Busy, it’s got to come out,” they said, according to Philipps.
After hearing the shocking news, she described how she was “hyperventilating and trying to breathe.”
Philipps is a mother of two, and telling her eldest daughter about the diagnosis was not easy.
“I just kept saying to her, ’Birdie, you’re just not in the movie where your mom dies your senior year of high school. That’s just not the movie that you’re in. I promise you.”
Busy Philipps brain tumor
After the discovery, Philipps had to undergo surgery. Doctors removed a 2.6-centimeter mass from her brain, which was later identified as a rare grade 2 oligodendroglioma.
Dr. Alexandra Miller, Philipps’ neuro-oncologist at NYU Langone, later told the outlet: “It is considered malignant, but it has the best prognosis of all of the malignant gliomas.
“It’s sort of defined as a cancerous tumor based on the ability of the tumor to regrow over time, rather than it looking very malignant under the microscope.”
After the surgery, Philipps described how she was “walking around the hospital.”
“A few of my nurses did say to me that patients like me worry them the most because it feels like you’re not going to slow down enough,” she said.
“The luckiest girl in the world”
Soon after the procedure, however, she was back to filming Cupertino. But while she was getting Botox, her dermatologist noticed that her surgical incision did not look right. Philipps sent a picture to her doctors, and they said it “didn’t look good”.
“Fortunately, we got to it early, so it wasn’t a deep infection,” she said.
The incision was later found to have developed a staph infection, requiring Philipps to undergo a second surgery.
Despite everything she had been through, Philipps considers herself lucky – both because the tumor was caught early and because she had a strong medical team around her.
“What am I? The luckiest girl in the world?,” she said.
Her experience has also left her with a message about trusting your instincts and seeking information when something does not feel right.
“We are frequently told by doctors that there is nothing to worry about when you kind of know that there’s something to worry about. There’s nothing to be afraid of in having information. It’s only empowering.”
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