Busy Philipps is revealing for the first time that she was diagnosed with a rare, malignant brain tumor earlier this year.
The actress, 47, explained in an interview with People that she discovered the lesion after getting the Instagram-famous Prenuvo scan, although she almost didn't at first.
While her initial appointment for the scan was scheduled for January, it was pushed to February due to the blizzards that hit New York City. And in the lead-up to it, her Dawson's Creek co-star and friend James Van Der Beek had died, plus she was slated to fly out to meet with her family and then the showrunners for the CBS show Cupertino.
© Getty Images"I'm grateful that I'm alive," the actress told the publication. Initially, she intended to cancel her appointment, which her primary doctor had said she didn't "need" because she was generally young and healthy. However, her close friend and former husband Marc Silverstein recommended she do it, in memory of James.
"Should I just cancel it?" she recalled asking Marc. "He's like, 'Maybe it's the best thing you could do for your friend this morning. Go get that scan.'"
After getting the scan, when her doctor spotted something unusual, she was recommended a follow-up MRI. What was discovered was a 2.6 centimeter oligodendroglioma, a malignant tumor with a nonetheless positive prognosis, especially given that it was caught early. "I was hyperventilating and trying to breathe," Busy says of how she took the news at first.
© Getty ImagesThe star also revealed the way she told her daughters, 18-year-old Birdie and 13-year-old Cricket, of the news. Birdie "was kind of beside herself and really, really scared and overwhelmed with emotion. 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.'"
"[Cricket's] reaction when I told her was like, 'Okay. You're going to be fine?' And I was like, 'I'm totally going to be fine.' And she's like, ‘Okay.'"
Busy underwent a successful surgery to remove the tumor in March, with Marc accompanying her to the hospital. Her Dawson's Creek co-star and close friend Michelle Williams also was by her side, and sent her food frequently while she recovered.
© Getty ImagesBusy quickly bounced back and even went to set to shoot Cupertino, although ended up back in the hospital a month later when she had developed staphylococcus in the incision in her skull, from which the tumor was removed. "The second surgery really threw me," she said. "I just felt like I was back to square one, and I was really, really upset."
Thankfully, everything went smoothly once again, and allowed Busy the time to reflect on some of her behavior from the past two years, and whether her tumor had affected it, especially some words from Michelle.
"She said, 'Busy, you have been saying for the past two years, My brain feels broken.' And she was right. I have. I've been saying this for the last few years. . . . I wasn't consciously aware that anything was really wrong, but there was something that was misfiring."
© Getty Images"Like, I could not get a handle on it," she continued, although she doesn't feel that way anymore. "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."
