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Busy Philipps is sharing how she was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor.
During a recent interview with People magazine, the 47-year-old “Cougar Town” actress shared the terrifying moment her doctor told her she had a brain tumor, the day after her “Dawson’s Creek” co-star, James Van Der Beek, died following a battle with colorectal cancer.
“Dr. Devinsky says to me, ‘I’m just going to say this to you the way I would want someone to say it to me,'” she recalled. “And that was when the wind like sort of knocked out of me and I had to sit down. He was like, ‘I need you to breathe. I can hear that you’re not breathing.’ And I was like, ‘Just tell me what’s happening.’ And he’s like, ‘This isn’t any of those other things that they said it could be. This is a real tumor and it’s inside your brain and Busy, it’s got to come out. We got to take it out.'”
She was then connected with Dr. John Golfinos of NYU Langone and scheduled the five-hour surgery for March 2, during which surgeons removed a 2.6-centimeter mass from her brain.
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The mass was then biopsied and revealed to be a grade 2 oligodendroglioma, a rare tumor that Dr. Alexandra Miller, Philipps’s neuro-oncologist at NYU Langone told People, affects 1,100 to 1,300 people a year in the U.S. She added that “it is considered malignant, but it has the best prognosis of all of the malignant gliomas.”
“It’s sort of defined as a cancerous tumor based on the ability of the tumor to regrow over time, rather than it looking very malignant under the microscope,” Miller said.
The diagnosis came after Philipps told her cousin’s husband, a doctor in Los Angeles, that she was interested in getting a Prenuvo scan but that her primary care doctor had told her in 2025, “You’re super healthy. We’ve done all this other blood work. We’ve done like all kinds of tests. You’re super healthy. There’s no need for you to get one.”
“‘Oh, I love them,'” he told Philipps about the scan. “And I was like, ‘Okay, cause my doctor just a few months ago said that I shouldn’t get one.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, like respectfully, don’t know your doctor, but disagree. I think knowledge is power.’ And what he said really resonated with me. And I was like, ‘That was kind of what I was feeling, too. I think I want to get one.’ He’s like, ‘Well, I’d be happy to help you set that up.'”
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After getting the scan, the “Freaks and Geeks” star went to an audition and later that night got a call from her cousin’s husband, who let her know there was a lesion on her brain and that she should get an MRI.
Dr. Devinsky later told her the MRI showed a tumor that needed to be removed.
Philipps’ neurosurgeon, Dr. John Golfinos, told People that the early detection of the tumor ultimately made the surgery much easier, adding that had they found the tumor later, it “would have been two or three times the size.”
Over a month after recovery, Philipps was back on the operating table after her dermatologist flagged that her incision site looked concerning.
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She had contracted staphylococcus, which required another surgery to cure, leaving Philipps feeling “really upset” and “like I was back at square one.”
Despite her health scares, Philipps still managed to film her upcoming legal drama, “Cupertino,” in which she plays the ex-wife of an AI billionaire who becomes the financier of a new law firm.
Philipps does not need chemotherapy or radiation, but will get regular scans to monitor any potential reoccurrence. Through this experience, the actress learned to trust her instincts.
“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,” she says. “There’s nothing to be afraid of in having information. It’s only empowering.”
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