With a strong family history of the disease, after both her mother and aunt had been diagnosed with breast cancer, the actress barely hesitated before deciding on a double mastectomy – surgery that removes the entire breast.
“When the doctor told me that I had a tumor in my left breast, I said, ‘make mine a double. Take them both off. I wasn’t taking any chances,” she is reported saying in a previous interview with Practical Pain Management.
“Breast cancer runs like a river through my family. My mother and niece had it; my aunt died of it.”
Despite testing negative for possessing the breast cancer gene BRCA, the star took the illness in her stride, bravely having the surgical procedure to minimise her risk of the cancer returning.
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Kathy Bates: The star has battled cancer twice (Image: Getty)
Having fought off two types of cancer, and losing both her uterus and breasts in the process, things were not over for the American Horror Story actress as she developed a condition known as lymphedema.
SurvivorNet explains that lymphedema is a condition in which extra lymph fluid – clear fluid that travels through the lymphatic system and helps to fight infection and disease – builds up in tissues and causes swelling, typically in the arm and hand.
“Then I got something called lymphedema,” Bates explained when appearing on The Kelly Clarkson Show back in 2019.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but for cancer, they remove lymph nodes. If your lymph system is damaged, often times, the fluid will back up in the affected limb.”
While she was still recovering from her mastectomy surgery, Bates admitted to becoming angry after realising she had lymphedema.
She told SurvivorNet: “When I woke up, I immediately felt something strange, a kind of tingling in my left arm.
“I went berserk. I left the examining room and ran out of the building. I still had my drains in, I was holding a pillow to my t*ts, and I thought, ‘What am I doing? It’s July, I’m standing out here, it’s hot, I’m still healing, I don’t want to hurt anything.’
“I was mad as hell. I think it was the culmination of having been through cancer twice and realising that now I’d have this condition, this life-long souvenir.
“I was bitter, I was depressed. I thought my career was over, I thought, ‘There’s no way, I’m done, everything is done.”
The NHS warns that lymphoedema needs treatment as soon as possible in order to stop it from getting worse.
Other symptoms in addition to swelling of the limbs, in an affected part of the body can include:
- An aching, heavy feeling
- Difficulty with movement
- Repeated skin infections
- Hard, tight skin
- Folds developing in the skin
- Wart-like growths developing on the skin
- Fluid leaking through the skin.
Due to her ordeal with the condition, Bates has taken it upon herself to become the national spokesman for the Lymphatic Education and Research Network, where she has learnt some interesting statistics about the condition.
