A doctor's ad on television was reality to actress Kate Walsh, who has recovered from a surgery to remove a brain tumor, which turned out to be benign, Cosmopolitan reported.
Walsh talked to the magazine about her condition and recovery in an article posted Monday. The former "Grey's Anatomy" and "Private Practice" star recently appeared in a television ad campaign with actors who portrayed doctors on television, including Patrick Dempsey, Neil Patrick Harris, and Donald Faison.
The Cigna ad campaign was an effort to encourage people to get annual check-ups and advocate for their own health, Cosmopolitan said.
For Walsh, the message became a very real issue while starring in NBC's "Bad Judges." She became ill, finding it difficult to drive and finish sentences, Cosmopolitan wrote. In June 2015, doctors found a brain tumor, a meningioma the size of a lemon that had to be removed by surgery, the magazine said.
"I thought maybe it was menopausal symptoms, because there are a lot of the same markers, but I really pushed to see a neurologist, I just had an instinct," Walsh told Cosmopolitan. "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. And three days later I was in surgery having it removed."
It was not the first time Walsh talked openly about personal medical issues. In 2015 she revealed to Maria Menounos on her SiriusXM radio show that she could not have children because of the early onset of menopause and she had struggled with infertility before, according to ABC News.
"My older sister called and was like 'By the way, you should go and get yourself checked because I’m going through menopause early,'" Walsh told the radio show then about her struggles in infertility, per ABC News.
"And I'm like, 'You're just scaring me.' And then yeah, sure enough, I went and they were like 'You have one egg and there's a hairline fracture. So enjoy it.'"
Walsh told Cosmopolitan that her acting jobs as a doctor did not make her any less afraid of having surgery.
"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," Walsh said.
"In the hospital, I felt like I might as well be 6 years old. My mother gave me rosary beads, my friend gave me a stuffed animal to go into surgery with… I played a real bada** on TV, but when it comes to being a patient it's such a vulnerable experience."
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