Busy Philipps revealed she was diagnosed with a rare malignant brain tumor and underwent two brain surgeries during the “weirdest six months of [her] life.”
The “Dawson’s Creek” alum said in her People cover story, published Wednesday, that she is “grateful to be alive” and dubbed herself “the luckiest girl in the world.”
The actress’ grade 2 oligodendroglioma, a rare slow-growing tumor, was discovered during a Prenuvo scan on Feb. 12 — the day after her former co-star James Van Der Beek died of cancer.
Philipps, notably, had been talked out of getting the full-body MRI in 2025 by her primary care doctor but scheduled it anyway following a conversation with her cousin-in-law Dr. Justin Donlan.
The internist told the 47-year-old “knowledge is power,” which “really resonated with” her.
Her January appointment, however, was pushed to February — and Philipps considered canceling before her ex-husband, Marc Silverstein, convinced her otherwise.
The “Freaks and Geeks” alum immediately texted Silverstein “comical” messages when a lesion was found on her brain.
She recalled, “[I wrote], ‘OMG I have a brain tumor.’ And he wrote back, ‘Busy, what? What are you saying? What are you talking about?’ I was like, ‘It looks fine. It’s probably benign. I don’t know.’”
She underwent another MRI, with a neurologist subsequently telling her, “This is a real tumor, and it’s inside your brain. And Busy, it’s got to come out.”
The confirmation left Philipps “hyperventilating and trying to breathe” — and feeling she had no choice but to tell her two children: Birdie, 18, and Cricket, 13.
Her eldest was “kind of beside herself and really, really scared and overwhelmed with emotion.”
Philipps remembered, “I just kept saying to her, ‘Birdie, you’re just not in the movie where your mom dies your senior year of high school. That’s just not the movie that you’re in. I promise you.’ [Cricket’s] reaction … was like, ‘OK. You’re going to be fine?’ And I was like, ‘I’m totally going to be fine.’ And she’s like, ‘OK.’”
The 2.6-centimeter mass was removed during a five-hour procedure on March 2.
The tumor would “have been much harder to take the whole thing out” had it not been detected early as it “would have been two or three times the size,” Philipps’ neuro-oncologist, Dr. Alexandra Miller, told People.
“It is considered malignant, but it has the best prognosis of all of the malignant gliomas,” the doctor clarified. “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.”
One month into Philipps’ recovery, her dermatologist expressed concern over the incision site during a Botox session.
The “Cougar Town” alum had contracted staphylococcus and needed a second surgery to clear the infection, which “really threw” her.
“I just felt like I was back to square one,” Philipps explained. “I was really, really upset.”
She gushed that she now no longer feels like her “brain is broken,” something she’d told BFF Michelle Williams prior to her diagnosis.
“I’ve been saying this for the last few years,” Philipps noted. “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.
“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 added. “There’s nothing to be afraid of in having information. It’s only empowering.”
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