Busy Philipps 'grateful' to be alive after rare brain tumour diagnosis

Busy Philipps is "grateful" to be alive after being diagnosed with a rare malignant brain tumour.

The Dawson's Creek star underwent a Prenuvo scan, a full-body MRI that checks for more than 500 conditions, on 12 February and learned there was a lesion on her brain.

After undergoing another MRI, the 47-year-old was told she had a grade 2 oligodendroglioma, a rare slow-growing tumour.

"'This is a real tumour, and it's inside your brain. And Busy, it's got to come out,'" Philipps recalled her doctor saying on the phone. "I was hyperventilating and trying to breathe."

In her interview with People, the Cougar Town star remembered breaking the news to her two children, Birdie, 18, and Cricket, 13.

Birdie "was kind of beside herself and really, really scared and overwhelmed with emotion", Philipps explained, while Cricket's reaction was, "'Okay. You're going to be fine?' And I was like, 'I'm totally going to be fine.'"

The 2.6-centimetre mass was removed during a five-hour operation on 2 March, but things took a turn when, one month into her recovery, she contracted staphylococcus and needed a second surgery to clear the infection.

"The second surgery really threw me. I just felt like I was back to square one, and I was really, really upset," she added.

Reflecting on "the weirdest six months of my life", Philipps told the outlet that she's grateful, saying, "What am I? The luckiest girl in the world?"

During her health battle, The White Chicks star's best friend Michelle Williams pointed out that she had been saying her "brain is broken" for two years.

"She was right. I have. I've been saying this for the last few years," she shared. "I wasn't consciously aware that anything was really wrong, but there was something that was misfiring. Like, I could not get a handle on it."

Since her surgery, her "brain does not feel broken anymore".

Going forward, Philipps will need regular scans to monitor for recurrence.