Kathy Bates, the Academy Award-winning actress, recently shared her battle with an “incurable” condition in an interview with Dr. Phil. She revealed her second encounter with cancer after surviving ovarian cancer.
Bates disclosed, “It’s no secret that I am an ovarian cancer survivor, nine years and counting. But few know that several weeks ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer.” She described the emotional impact, saying, “You think American Horror Story is scary? You should’ve been in that room with me.”
Despite her earlier ordeal, Bates kept her suffering private, undergoing surgeries and chemotherapy without informing anyone. She recounted, “I didn’t want anyone to know, but it really took a lot out of me.” Currently cancer-free, Bates faces lymphedema, an incurable condition affecting around 30 percent of breast cancer survivors, due to lymph node removal.
For an A-list celebrity of Kathy’s caliber, privacy is hard to come by. Walk past any magazine stand and you’ll see cover after cover splashed with stories focusing in on stars’ personal lives. Cue the media’s collective surprise when Kathy revealed in 2009 that she had silently fought ovarian cancer – more than five years earlier.
Having just signed on to appear in the movie Little Black Book, Kathy somehow managed to avoid media attention as she endured a complete hysterectomy and nine rounds of chemotherapy. Only the people closest to her knew her secret. But several years later, a fellow cancer survivor inspired the actress to come clean about her experience.
“Seeing breast cancer survivor] Melissa Etheridge in concert with her bald head, wailing on her electric guitar, she was a force to be reckoned with,” Kathy recalls. “I realized it wasn’t necessary to hide. Nobody should be ashamed to have cancer.”
With this revelation in mind, when a CT scan in 2012 revealed a tumor in her left breast and something suspicious in the right, Kathy didn’t hold back, boldly announcing via Twitter that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was recovering from a double mastectomy.