Busy Philipps found a friend in Bachelor Nation’s Joe Amabile amid their respective brain tumor journeys.
“If you’ve been following Joe Amabile … from The Bachelor, he’s been documenting in real time,” Philipps, 47, said via her Instagram Story on Wednesday, August 26. “I reached out to him because several of my friends sent me his original post. We have almost the exact same story — prenuvo scan, found this lesion in our brains, almost the exact same kind of tumor. His is slightly different than mine, we know now. I introduced him to my doctors.”
She continued, “He’s like my brain tumor brother. It’s so weird. But he’s been documenting it in real time. His recovery, he’s just a couple weeks out now. He’s going to run the marathon. He’s doing great. Love you Joe.”
Amabile, 40, shared his diagnosis in July and underwent brain surgery earlier this month to remove a tumor, while Philipps went public with her own health journey on Wednesday. In an interview with People, Philipps shared that a Prenuvo full-body scan in February confirmed the presence of a grade 2 oligodendroglioma, a rare slow-growing tumor.
Philipps, however, considered canceling her scan because it was scheduled one day after former Dawson’s Creek costar James Van Der Beek died from stage III colorectal cancer. (Van Der Beek died on February 11 at age 48.)
“‘Should I cancel it?’” Philipps recalled asking her ex-husband, Marc Silverstein, who replied at the time, “Maybe it’s the best thing you could do for your friend this morning. Go get that scan.”
When Prenuvo confirmed the presence of a tumor, Philipps recalled “hyperventilating” while “trying to breathe.” She ultimately underwent the procedure in March and doctors removed a 2.6-centimeter mass from her brain.
“It is considered malignant, but it has the best prognosis of all of the malignant gliomas,” Philipps’ neuro-oncologist, Dr. Alexandra Miller, told People. “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.”
Philipps, for her part, “wasn’t in pain at all.” One month later, however, Philipps contracted staphylococcus on her incision and needed a follow-up surgery to debride and clear the wound. Despite her successful surgery, Philipps will continue to receive regular scans to monitor.
“What am I? The luckiest girl in the world?” she quipped.
