Busy Philipps has revealed she underwent multiple life-saving surgeries after receiving a rare brain tumor diagnosis.
Philipps, known for roles in Freaks and Geeks, Dawson’s Creek and Girls5eva, said in a new interview that in February, doctors discovered she had a grade 2 oligodendroglioma, a rare slow-growing tumor.
“I’m grateful that I’m alive,” she told People, adding that the treatment was the “weirdest six months of my life.”
The actor revealed she made the appointment to receive a full-body MRI despite having no symptoms at the time, but nearly canceled it after a New York City blizzard and personal obligations got in the way of her original schedule.
However, after discussing it with her ex-husband and close friend, Marc Silverstein, she decided to go ahead with the scan.
Around the same time, her longtime friend and Dawson’s Creek co-star, James Van Der Beek, died at 48 following a colon cancer diagnosis.
“He’s like, ‘Maybe it’s the best thing you could do for your friend this morning. Go get that scan,’” Philipps recalled Silverstein telling her.
When she received her diagnosis, Philipps was told that she had a lesion on her brain. He instructed her to get a follow-up MRI as early as possible to get a better look at the lesion.
“‘This is a real tumor, and it’s inside your brain. And Busy, it’s got to come out,’” the actor remembers her doctor saying on the phone.
“I was hyperventilating and trying to breathe,” she said.
The actor recalled her child Birdie’s reaction, saying that the teen was “kind of beside herself and really, really scared and overwhelmed with emotion.”
She said her younger daughter, Cricket, had a much calmer response.
“Her 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.’”
Silverstein accompanied the actor to the hospital for the roughly five-hour procedure in March. During the surgery, the tumor, which measured 2.6 centimeters, was removed and biopsied.
The actor’s doctor, Dr. Alexandra Miller, a neuro-oncologist at NYU Langone, told People that the type of tumor was defined by two genetic alterations that are found in just 1,100 to 1,300 people per year in the U.S.
While she was recovering from the surgery, Philipps experienced complications with her incision wound healing, and she contracted staphylococcus in the wound and needed debridement surgery to clear the infection.
“The second surgery really threw me. I just felt like I was back to square one, and I was really, really upset,” said Philipps.
Philipps told the outlet that she has wondered whether some of the mood swings she has been experiencing over the past couple of years were the result of the tumor pressing on her frontal lobe, and not perimenopause.
She said her doctor told her, “‘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.”
“Like, I could not get a handle on it,” she said, adding: “My brain does not feel broken anymore.”
According to the National Cancer Institute, Oligodendroglioma symptoms depend on the tumor’s location.
It states that the most common sign of the tumor is a seizure, but additional symptoms may include headaches, problems with thinking and memory, weakness, numbness and problems with balance and movement.
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