It feels like an abnormality that Kate Walsh, beloved for her portrayal of Addison Montgomery in Grey’s Anatomy, would be brushed aside by doctors only to later be diagnosed with cancer.
The Private Practice star fought for an MRI after a number of concerning signs. In 2015, Kate was diagnosed with meningioma, a common type of brain cancer.
“I was very, very fortunate,” she reflected while appearing on The Kelly Clarkson Show. Despite Kate considering herself to be “lucky,” it wasn’t a simple journey.
Kate was confronted with a number of warning signs, that even she brushed off at first. At the time she’d just wrapped the TV series, Bad Judge – which wasn’t renewed. So Kate initially thought she was just “really burned” out.
But then, she noticed her attention span was declining, and later, her yoga teacher noticed her right side was dipping. So when the American actress explained her worrying symptoms to the doctor, it was pushed aside as overworking or menopause.
“He said, ‘oh you’re an actress in your 40s, you’re out of work and you’re going through menopause, you need some anti depressants’,” Kate recalled on Mamamia’s Well podcast.
In her heart, Kate knew she needed an MRI and continued to fight.
“I had to really push. [The doctor’s] like, ‘What do you think you’re going to find?’” she added.
“It was as if I was asking him to build the MRI machine,” she said, “and I think it was an insurance thing, who knows but I pushed… and yeah, they found a pretty sizeable tumour.”
The tumour was located in Kate’s left hemisphere. However, the sheer size of the tumour was impinging on her right side, and therefore the motor skills on that side.
It was removed just three days after the MRI results, and was determined to be benign.
“Then the recovery was gnarly,” she admitted.
Kate stepped away from acting, worried the “stigma” around illnesses may impact her future work. During this time, the actress worked to regain her strength and stamina. But reconnecting her mind to her body was her biggest challenge.
Kate isn’t the first example of a woman’s symptoms being minimised. Research has found gender bias is the main reason why women’s pain is undertreated.
Nurofen’s Gender Pain Index Report showed more than half of the women surveyed felt their pain was ignored or dismissed. Almost a third said this was because their pain wasn’t taken seriously by the GP.
