On the gradual progression of her symptoms:
"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. 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."
"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. 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."
On the moment she was told her diagnosis:
"The words "brain tumor" were never in my zeitgeist. I went in for the MRI, and you know it’s serious when they don’t even wait, they’re like 'hey, the radiologist wants to see you.' And she starts to say, 'Well, it looks like you have a very sizable brain tumor' — and I just left my body. My assistant had driven me there, and I had to go get him so that he could take notes, because I was gone. It was never anything I would have imagined."
"They suspected that it was benign, but they wouldn’t know for sure until they got in there. It was over 5cm, like a small lemon in my head, causing quite a bit of damage: there was a lot of swelling, and I had started getting shooting pains in my head. I shattered my pinkie the night before my MRI, because I had no depth perception. It was crazy. The whole situation was so overwhelming, and I was just so relieved to know there was something wrong, that it wasn’t just my imagination and that my instincts were correct."
On her surgery:
"As much as it was scary, I was sort of in robot mode once I found out. I was relieved that I could get in with a great doctor and one of the most amazing surgeons in the world, and have them take care of it. I had the MRI and three days later I was in surgery, and it was benign and they were able to get all of it. After that, I just really focused on recovery, and surrendering to that process. 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. I did exactly what the doctors told me to do, and asked tons of questions when I had them, and got lots of support, and just took my time."
On the biggest thing she learned:
"Go see a doctor! We’re all so socialized to try to self-diagnose, like 'I’ll change my workout, I'll change my diet.' I'm very proactive and willful and independent, and in the past, even though I played a doctor on TV for years, I was not one to go see doctors very often, other than for my annual OB-GYN appointment. So for me, it was a really big wakeup call to do annual check-ups, and that’s why I wanted to pair up with Cigna for this campaign. I love the idea of changing the framing around healthcare, and changing it from a reactionary thing — 'Oh my god, I’m sick, I have to go to the doctor' — to something more along the lines of preventive care. We should go get a checkup the same way we go to the gym, just preventively, instead of waiting for something to go wrong."
On why she decided to speak out:
"This was a very private experience for me. I really didn’t want to talk about it, I wanted it to be mine, but I knew that someday I would want to share it. One of the most interesting things for me about this diagnosis was that this tumor is twice as common in women as men. It can be especially hard for women to take time out for their health — you’re mothers, you’re career women, you’re spinning all of these plates, and it’s hard sometimes to hand over the superwoman cape and ask for help. When the Cigna campaign came along, I thought it was a perfect marriage. I loved the humor of the storytelling, poking fun at TV doctors, and it was a way for me to talk about my own personal experience and be of service to others."
Read the full interview at Cosmopolitan.
No comments:
Post a Comment