Kathy Griffin reveals she has lung cancer: ‘I’ve never smoked’
Kathy Griffin Shares She Has Lung Cancer Despite “Never” Smoking
In a post shared to Instagram on August 2, Kathy Griffin announced she’s battling stage 1 lung cancer: “I’m about to go into surgery to have half of my left lung removed.”
Kathy Griffin is encouraging her fans to routinely check on their health.
The guidance comes as the 60-year-old comedian shared on Instagram August 2 that she has lung cancer.
“I’ve got to tell you guys something,” she wrote. “I have cancer. I’m about to go into surgery to have half of my left lung removed. Yes, I have lung cancer even though I’ve never smoked!”
Griffin told her followers her doctors are “very optimistic” as it’s stage 1 cancer and contained in her left lung.
“Hopefully no chemo or radiation after this and I should have normal function with my breathing,” E!’s former Fashion Police host continued. “I should be up and running around as usual in a month or less. It’s been a helluva 4 years, trying to get back to work, making you guys laugh and entertaining you, but I’m gonna be just fine.”
She also noted she’s fully vaccinated against COVID-19. “The consequences for being unvaccinated would have been even more serious,” Griffin stated. “Please stay up to date on your medical check ups. It’ll save your life. XXOO, KG.”
In an interview with ABC News’ Nightline set to fully air this evening, the Emmy winner revealed she recently received her diagnosis.
“Really just days ago—like I think two weeks ago—I was diagnosed with cancer,” she told anchor Juju Chang. “As a friend of mine had said, ‘How many kicks in the nuts can you take?’ And I’m like, ‘My nuts are pretty strong, but it’s a challenge.'”
Griffin said she was “definitely in shock.”
“I’m still a little bit in shock,” she added, “not denial but I still, like, once a day I’ll just turn to, like, nobody next to me and go, ‘Can you believe this s–t? Is this a bitch or what?'”
In 2017, Griffin shaved her head in honor of her sister Joyce, who underwent chemotherapy for her own cancer battle and passed away later that year. She lost her brother Gary to cancer in 2014, as well.
After Griffin shared the news of her diagnosis, several of her followers and celebrity friends sent kind messages.
“Love you so much!!!” Ross Mathews wrote in the comments section. “I’m here if you need anything. Don’t hesitate.”
Kathy Griffin Says She Is Undergoing Surgery for Lung Cancer
Kathy Griffin has revealed that she is undergoing surgery for lung cancer and her doctors are optimistic she “should be up and running around as usual in a month or less.”.
The comedian took to Instagram and Twitter Monday to say her cancer was caught early and confined to her left lung. The surgery will result in half her left lung being removed.
“It’s been a helluva four years, trying to get back to work, making you guys laugh and entertaining you, but I’m gonna be just fine,” she wrote. “Please stay up to date on your medical check ups.”
Well-wishers included Jane Lynch, who wrote on Twitter: “I’m beaming out to you all my love and vibes for good health,” and Ashley Nicole Black, who wrote: “Praying for you! So many folks got your back!”
Griffin has had a tumultuous few years, including facing backlash in 2017 for taking part in a photoshoot that showed her holding up a fake bloody head resembling president Donald Trump. Her sister, Joyce Griffin, died of cancer in September 2017 and her mother, Maggie Griffin, died in March 2020 after battling dementia.
Kathy Griffin battles lung cancer, shares about dark chapter of addiction
“Whether I like it or not, I think I’m a resilient survivor,” Griffin said.
Kathy Griffin has had quite a year navigating the darkest chapter of her life, and is now battling lung cancer. She’s used to weathering storms, including living through her fair share of controversy. The comedian has claimed she’d been banned from various shows over her decadeslong career.
But she says nothing could compare to the fallout she experienced from her 2017 photoshoot in which she held a mask that appeared to be bloodied with then President Donald Trump’s likeness. By June 2020, she was in the throes of a painkiller addiction and even attempted suicide. Yet, she’s still here.
Kathy Griffin has had quite a year navigating the darkest chapter of her life, and is now battling lung cancer. She’s used to weathering storms, including living through her fair share of controversy. The comedian has claimed she’d been banned from various shows over her decadeslong career.
But she says nothing could compare to the fallout she experienced from her 2017 photoshoot in which she held a mask that appeared to be bloodied with then President Donald Trump’s likeness. By June 2020, she was in the throes of a painkiller addiction and even attempted suicide. Yet, she’s still here.
But she did. Now, Griffin is looking to overcome another obstacle, reporting that she has a cancerous tumor in her lung.
“The irony is not lost on me that, a little over a year ago, all I wanted to do was die. And now, all I wanna do is live,” she said.
‘It got out of control’
Griffin launched her “Laugh Your Head Off” tour in 2017 in the wake of the Trump backlash. She sold out shows around the world.
She said her first show on the tour was in Auckland, New Zealand, where someone who she described as a “Trumper” threw a glass bottle at her head. She said she later saw him speaking in interviews, where he appeared to be proud of the attack. As her tour carried on, she said that behind the scenes, she was crumbling and sustaining her addiction.
“I lost a ton of weight… I wasn’t even aware of … not being able to keep food down because I was dealing with so many things,” she said. “Yet, I had such a drive to get back on stage and show that I couldn’t be taken down. … It was a really tough time. It was one of those times where I was on a mission and I was gonna get through it. And it was a very, very gratifying, but very difficult tour.”
Griffin said she was first introduced to pills via Provigil, an amphetamine similar to Adderall, which she had been prescribed by a doctor. She said she was later prescribed Ambien to help her sleep, and then painkillers after various injuries.
“I really fell in love with them,” she said. “Then, it was kind of the allure of, ‘Oh, I can regulate my energy levels or my moods. Or … I fell on my elbow in my act or something and I can be pain-free or something.’ And it got out of control very rapidly.”
Griffin said she was spiraling. Her painful moments were captured in the documentary about her life after the photoshoot, “Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story.”
“Those were very real moments, obviously … when I’m breaking down on the plane, I was really convinced that … somebody was gonna harm me or … a mob [was] waiting in this environment, or something like that. I just felt there was impending doom,” she said. “I was already starting to think … it was time for me to go. And I was certainly being told by an awful lotta people it’s time for me to go.”
She said she began to believe her critics, and started thinking that there probably wouldn’t be a next chapter.
‘I started thinking about suicide more and more’
Griffin grew up in an Irish Catholic family where she says she was surrounded by “lots” of alcoholism. She says she maintained her sobriety in spite of her surroundings.
“It really wasn’t until later in life that folks from that generation started kind of talking about alcoholism and what it meant,” she said. “I still think that if I would’ve taken a drink, I think I would have become an alcoholic very quickly.”
Griffin said she survived sexual abuse from her late brother, the eldest sibling. She said she had called him out in front of the family.
“It also plays into the idea of wanting to be sort of a whistleblower in my comedy, and say things that you’re sort of ‘not supposed to say,’’’ she said. “I really credit comedy for saving my life because it’s not just an outlet for me. I truly feel it’s a healer and it’s necessary. … I feel compelled to do a sort of in-your-face style of comedy. Brutally honest, good, bad or indifferent.”
For some people, that style of comedy went too far when she posted the video of herself posing with what appeared to be a bloodied mask bearing Trump’s likeness. In the photo, she made a joke referencing a controversial comment Trump had made about then Fox News host Megyn Kelly. She faced swift backlash from critics saying it could be interpreted as a threat of violence against Trump.
Griffin was subsequently fired from her position as host of CNN’s “New Year’s Eve Live” broadcast, her scheduled tour dates were canceled and her friend and broadcaster Anderson Cooper tweeted that he was “appalled” by the photo shoot, calling it “clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate.”
“The Anderson Cooper situation was just difficult because I just loved him. I just adored him. So that one hurt,” she said. “I think that emotionally, that was the most painful, to have so many friends that, to this day, haven’t called.”
As her friends turned their backs on her, Griffin said she received death threats and that her family was also targeted.
“I mean, legit death threats with everything, from online, which is the Google pictures of the house, the address. I mean, folks showed up to my husband’s parents’ house,” she said. “They tracked my sister down when she was dying of cancer in the hospital and called her … I picked up the call and heard it myself because I happened to be visiting her.”
Although she had issued an apology for the photoshoot, she eventually rescinded it, calling the fallout “faux outrage,” and then went on her comeback tour. It appeared she says she came out of the controversy as defiant as ever, but in reality, she says she couldn’t escape her pain.
“I started thinking about suicide more and more as I got into the pill addiction, and it became almost an obsessive thought. I started really convincing myself it was a good decision,” Griffin said. “I got my living revocable trust in order. I had all my ducks in a row. I wrote the note — the whole thing.”
‘The silver lining’
Following her suicide attempt, Griffin said she got in touch with a doctor and her husband helped her get treatment. They went to a hospital where she was placed on a psychiatric hold. After her release, she said she worked with two clinicians who helped her start on the road to recovery.
Although she’d never had a drink in her life, Griffin said it was through Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that “the clouds started to part.” However, becoming clean posed challenges, too.
“The detox was nasty,” Griffin said. “I mean, it was months. I mean, the tremors … and the flop sweat, and I was so unsteady. Like, when I would brush my teeth, my husband had to hold my hips so I wouldn’t fall over.”
She went on to say, “I would go to, like, two Zoom meetings a day, and the sober clinicians would come over every single day and they would pee-test me. And every day, my goal was to … test clean.”
Today, Griffin says she’s still in recovery, but will always consider herself an addict. She is just over a year sober.
She says she has found friendship and support through her recovery community.
“We have this thing in common, and it’s such a mutually supportive environment. I find that very gratifying,” she said. “I also like that in recovery, when I talk to other addicts, I love that it’s a no-BS kind of a conversation. I mean, you’re talking to other addicts that have been in the hospital or been in jail. … There’s not a lot of small talk and I like that.”
Griffin said she has a newfound appreciation for life and that she won’t get involved in anything that might threaten her recovery. Now, she plans to let work come to her.
“Here’s the silver lining,” she said of sobriety. “I am so thrilled and grateful. I feel like, at 60, I’m gonna get a next chapter. That’s the thing everyone said wasn’t gonna happen. I believed [it] wasn’t gonna happen.”
‘Now, all I want to do is live’
Without pills to numb her physical pain, Griffin started to wonder if she had arthritis. She went to a doctor who, she says, noticed a mass that she’d long had on her lung had doubled in size.
“I’ve had it for a long time,” Griffin said about the mass. “And it gets X-rayed every three years and hasn’t grown. So she said, ‘Well, this time, it grew.”
Griffin says while she’s never smoked, she was nevertheless diagnosed with lung cancer only a few weeks ago. While smoke is by far the leading cause of lung cancer, the American Cancer Society says that there are some risk factors that can cause it in nonsmokers.
“I was definitely in shock. I’m still a little bit in shock. Not denial, but … once a day, I’ll just turn to, like, nobody next to me and go, ‘Can you believe this s–t? Is this a bitch or what,’” she said. “It’s stage 1. It’s nowhere else in my body. So I need to focus on that.”
Griffin underwent surgery to remove the mass on Monday, Griffin reports.
“I’m about to lose half my lung, and by the way, can I tell you something? When you’re a comic, the doctors all wanna be funny. … I love when they try material on me, like it hasn’t been happening to me for 40 freaking years,” she said.
“He’s like, ‘Well, you know, the lung is actually a couple of balloons. And so we basically just deflate the lower balloon — remove it. It’s kinda like taking out a used condom. You can use that,’” she said. “And I’m, like, ‘OK. Why don’t you do the surgery and I’ll do the jokes.’”