Kate Walsh, who had a benign brain tumor removed in 2015, says she had to convince a doctor to give her the MRI that led to her diagnosis.
Describing the neurologist she consulted in 2015 as “condescending,” the 50-year-old actress recalled to Self magazine in an interview published Thursday that the doctor questioned her desire to have a brain scan.
“He’s like, ‘Why? What do you think you’re going to find?'” she said.
She says he implied that she was actually depressed, telling her, “You’re an actress, you’re in your 40s, you’re not working,” but she let him know that she already sees a therapist and did not want to be put on antidepressants instead of getting an MRI.
“To be fair to this physician, he didn’t know me, I had never gone to a neurologist before,” she said. “I’m sure he gets a lot of people who are reactive or thinking that they’re constantly dying or something, but I do feel like it was probably a little bit of sexism. I had a female [general practitioner] in LA and I know that she was enraged when I told her about this.”
According to the magazine, the “Grey’s Anatomy” star’s pre-MRI symptoms included exhaustion, cognitive difficulties and not being able to finish her sentences.
Walsh told Cosmopolitan in September that she “really had to advocate, because they don’t hand out MRIs so easily.”
“But I got an MRI and thank God I did,” she said, “because it turned out I had a very sizable brain tumor in my left frontal lobe. And three days later I was in surgery having it removed.”