Star of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, Kate Walsh made a public statement about having a brain tumor on Monday.
The diagnosis came in 2015 when the actress was working on Bad Judge. Walsh said,
"Then when I was driving, I started swerving into the right lane. The exhaustion got to the point where I could drink five cups of coffee, and still not feel awake or clear. And then around April, I started having more cognitive difficulties. It felt like aphasia, but it wasn't just not being able to find words; I would lose my train of thought, I wasn't able to finish sentences, and that was when I got really alarmed."
Her Pilates instructor noticed motor deficits, her boyfriend noticed changes in her memory, and the changes were bad enough that when the medical drama star finally saw a neurologist the the right side of her face had started drooping.
The doctors found a 5-inch a meningioma that was putting pressure on her left frontal lobe.
The Mayo Clinic says while a meningioma is not technically a brain tumor, it causes "it may compress or squeeze the adjacent brain, nerves and vessels." It is also the most common type of tumor that forms in the head.
Ironically, of all the diagnosis she had to learn as an actress, she had never heard the term meningioma before, according to CBS. She was also not okay being a patient despite all her time portraying a doctor.
"You'd think that after playing Dr. Addison for the better part of a decade, where I spent more time on a hospital set than at my house, that I would feel somehow more comfortable, but I was such a little scaredy-cat."
After surgery Walsh says she recovered very quickly.
She says she is coming out now because while women go for regular gynecologic exams, many do not get annual physicals. Self-diagnosis, changing exercise and diet to fix problems isn't enough and Walsh is joining co-star Patrick Dempsey and other TV doctors like Donald Faison (Scrubs), Niel Patrick Harris (Doogie Houser, MD) and Jane Seymour (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) in Cigna's campaign to encourage annual exams.
Other stars who have had the same diagnosis include Sheryl Crow, Elizabeth Taylor, Mary Tyler Moore and Maria Menounos.