Kate Walsh Says She ‘Left’ Her Body When Learning of Her Brain Tumor
June 6, 2018Sharing her story. Kate Walsh recently opened up about the benign brain tumor she was diagnosed with in 2015 and revealed how she felt the moment she heard the news.
The 50-year-old Grey’s Anatomy star spoke candidly about her diagnosis during a Tuesday, June 5, interview on the first ever episode of the “DENtalks Podcast,” revealing that two of the people closest to her at the time thought she “was just depressed because the show [Bad Judge on NBC] was canceled.”
She continued: “I’ve had shows canceled, [and I thought] ‘this doesn’t feel like that.’ And my assistant told me ‘I thought you were just going crazy.’ Because he had only known me working, so he was like, ‘Oh, maybe this is what it’s like when she’s not working.’”
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“I was so scared because I didn’t know what was happening to my body,” she added. “I started meditating again to calm myself with my old mantra, silent mantra.”
As for the testing that took place prior to the doctor revealing the scary news, Walsh said: “And as soon as I was done [with MRI], the MRI tech was like, the radiologist wants to see you. And she says … [it] appears to be a very large, we don’t know until [the doctors] get in there … hopefully benign brain meningioma, brain tumor … in that moment I left my body … I thought maybe it was like early onset Alzheimer’s or some sort of macular degeneration.”
In terms of her recovery, the Private Practice alum detailed that “everything shifted.”
She continued: “You know, there’s definitely, I think a moment — and probably a lot of people who have had either a big illness, or some kind of medical scare can relate to this — after you survive … you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, what’s important?’ You face your own mortality in a very real way.”
Walsh previously opened up about her diagnosis during a 2017 interview for Cosmopolitan where she noted that “the exhaustion got to the point where I could drink five cups of coffee and still not feel awake or clear,” prior to seeing a doctor.
“I really pushed to see a neurologist, I just had an instinct. I had to really advocate, because they don’t hand out MRIs so easily, but I got an MRI and thank God I did, because it turned out I had a very sizable brain tumor in my left frontal lobe,” she told the outlet at the time. “And three days later I was in surgery having it removed.”