Kate Walsh revealed she was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor two years ago.
The “Grey’s Anatomy” alum, 49, had felt exhausted but chalked it up to her “insane” working hours, but when her fatigue wasn’t lessening she started to worry, she says in a new interview with Cosmopolitan.
“My pilates instructor said, ‘Hey, your right side is dipping,’ and it didn’t feel like I was off, but I looked down and could see it. Then when I was driving, I started swerving into the right lane,” Walsh told Cosmopolitan. “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.”
Walsh thought it might have been menopausal symptoms, but an “instinct” told her to see a neurologist.
“I had to really advocate, because they don’t hand out MRIs so easily, but I got an MRI and thank God I did,” she said, “because it turned out I had a very sizable brain tumor in my left frontal lobe. And three days later I was in surgery having it removed.”
After the doctors successfully removed the entire “lemon”-sized tumor from her head, Walsh took nine months off from work to focus on recovery.
“I love to work hard and do 800 things at once, and this was a really amazing lesson in just submitting to the process of healing,” she shared.
Fully recovered, Walsh dove into work again, shooting “Girls Trip” and “13 Reasons Why.”