Dawson’s Creek star Busy Philipps has revealed she had a brain tumour removed, which was diagnosed shortly after her former co-star James Van Der Beek died from bowel cancer.<\/p>\n
The 47-year-old, born Elizabeth Philipps, starred in the hit US teen drama as Audrey Liddell opposite Van Der Beek, who died in February aged 48.<\/p>\n
The actress said she is “grateful” that she is alive following a period she described as the “weirdest six months of my life”.<\/p>\n
Known for Freaks and Geeks and Cougar Town, Philipps said she did not present any obvious symptoms of having a tumour, such as seizures.<\/p>\n
She was reassured by her doctor that she did not need a scan, but she felt she needed one regardless.<\/p>\n
After consulting a second doctor months later, she went through with a Prenuvo scan, a whole-body MRI screening, that led to the discovery of the grade 2 oligodendroglioma, a rare low-grade (slow-growing) tumour.<\/p>\n
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Speaking to People, Philipps said: “I didn’t know why I wanted to get this scan except for the fact that I just did.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“There’s nothing to be afraid of in having information. It’s only empowering.”<\/p>\n
Philipps said that over the past two years she would tell friends that her “brain feels broken” and assumed certain behaviours were caused by perimenopause.<\/p>\n
Her doctor could not confirm whether it was related to the tumour.<\/p>\n
She said: “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.<\/p>\n
“[And now] my brain does not feel broken anymore.”<\/p>\n
Philipps debated cancelling the scan with her ex-husband, filmmaker Marc Silverstein, as it came days after the death of her friend and former co-star Van Der Beek and just before an audition for a role in the upcoming legal drama Cupertino.<\/p>\n
She recounted: “He’s like, ‘Maybe it’s the best thing you could do for your friend this morning. Go get that scan’.”<\/p>\n
When neurologist Dr Orrin Devinsky told her the news, Philipps said she was “hyperventilating and trying to breathe”.<\/p>\n
Two days after the surgery, she was back home recovering and said that she “wasn’t in pain at all” with more than 40 surgical staples in her forehead.<\/p>\n
Among the friends and family wishing her a swift recovery was her Dawson’s Creek co-star Michelle Williams, who she said arranged “delicious” food service for her.<\/p>\n
Philipps soon started her “dream job” playing Natalia Boutella, a wealthy and flamboyant financial backer of a Silicon Valley law firm in Cupertino.<\/p>\n
However, not long into filming the series she learned she had contracted an infection, staphylococcus, in her incision and needed debridement surgery – a procedure to remove dead, damaged, or infected tissue.<\/p>\n
Despite this, she felt grateful everything was caught early, adding: “What am I? The luckiest girl in the world?”<\/p>\n
Source: Press Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dawson’s Creek star Busy Philipps has revealed she had a brain tumour removed, which was diagnosed shortly after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-606123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}