by Emmy winner and renowned comic and TV personality, Kathy Griffin appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live to share her news that she was officially cancer free on Sunday night. She had been battling with lung cancer since 2017 and had half of one of her lungs removed for the same.
The 61 year old comedian appeared on the ABC talk show series to talk about her long drawn battle with thoracic cancer despite never having touched a cigarette in her life. She was first diagnosed with a tumour in her lungs which later when tested revealed to be actually a cancerous growth of cells and required surgery to prevent from further infection.
‘I don’t know why, I had a tumour, right? And I’ve never smoked, and it was in there for 10 years. So get this, they took it out and found it in another scan,’ she said on the show. She then goes on to say how her doctor tried to appeal her humorous side while explaining the procedure to her.
‘So I go in, and he’s like describing how they take half your lung out, and he goes, ‘It’s kind of a like a balloon,”’ she added. ‘So, we do it laparoscopically and we poke it, then he goes, “And when we take it out, kind of looks like a used condom.” She had her medical insurance to cover for the mounting hospital bill.
Throughout this phase, Griffin has maintained a pretty positive and humorous demeanour to it all. She joked about her disease now that she was free of cancer and commented on how the laparoscopic surgery had actually affected her vocal chords and they were currently on the mend. It has changed her overall voice frequency.
‘It will heal, but I’m sort of enjoying it,’ Griffin said. ‘I’m a good two octaves higher, I think … it’s higher than Mariah Carey,’ she said in a higher pitch.
The Oak Park, Illinois native first announced her battle with cancer publicly on August and then went underground while dealing with surgeries and continuous trips to the hospital and the doctor’s. On the late night show she joked about how she was slowly getting “un-cancelled” referring to her altercation with Donald Trump, the then President of United States, in 2017 when she held a replica of a severed head of him during a protest. Her career took a big hit then, because of her criticism of the POTUS leading to her show getting cancelled or not getting enough coverage.
‘So you guys know I’m cancelled, right? Like, I was like, cancelled,’ she said. ‘And so I’m very slowly getting un-cancelled.’
Kathy Griffin likened the case to the time Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar posted a video clip where he was pretending to commit heinous and deriding acts of assaults on President Joe Biden and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While talking about this event she added, “And you know that guy Paul Gosar made a video, and I was back in the news again? So anyway, so I think I’m gonna get un-cancelled. I think I’m an actress again, guys.”
The comedian however commended Jimmy Kimmel for actually taking her side during the time and against the President and how ridiculous the entire accusation and the ordeal had been. But she certainly was no longer worried about any of that, now that she was officially cancer free.
