Comedian Kathy Griffin Has Lung Cancer

Comedian, actress and television personality Kathy Griffin shared a scary diagnosis this week when she announced she had lung cancer.

By Doug Norrie | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

kathy griffin

Comedian and celebrity personality Kathy Griffin shared some unwelcome news last week when she announced that she had been diagnosed with lung cancer. She originally shared the news and update on an Instagram post from her personal account. Since then she has had surgery to try to stave off the cancer and appears to be on the road to recovery following a very scary diagnosis. 

The original Instagram post is where Kathy Griffin initially announced that she has lung cancer. In it she expressed optimism around the diagnosis, saying it was confined to the left lung and that doctors thought that it was very much treatable. She said it was stage one cancer and that there was hope no chemotherapy or other such treatments were to going to be needed to combat the cancer. Here was her original post:

About a day later Kathy Griffin announced she had surgery on her left lung to have the cancer removed and it appeared to have all gone according to plan. Half her left lung was removed in the procedure. Though it did seem to have maybe been a little more debilitating than she had originally anticipated. Griffin took to Twitter to give a post-surgery update on how she was feeling and some other news, personal in nature, about other issues she has had in the past. 

At the end of that Tweet, Kathy Griffin mentions a suicide attempt back in 2020 which landed her in the hospital. She has since come out and opened up about what exactly happened and the struggles she was dealing with at that point in her life. In an interview with ABC, Griffin discussed how she began using prescription medication back in 2017 following some media fallout around her comedy tour. She received considerable backlash for a photoshoot she did that had her holding the severed head of then-President Donald Trump. Griffin was a vocal opponent of Trump at the time. 

She received such negative publicity from this that Kathy Griffin say she had trouble sleeping, overused medication and over the years began suicidal thoughts. She says that she had even gone through the details of what it would mean to take her own life. This culminated with the aforementioned hospital visit in 2020 in which she was admitted as a psychiatric patient. Since then she has been on the road to recovery around her mental health. Griffin has credited her husband Randy Bick with the support she needed to get through such a difficult time. 

It appears that Kathy Griffin, after the original announcement of the cancer diagnosis is trending in the right direction. The comedian has no scheduled appearances on her calendar right now as she recovers from the surgery. The longtime entertainer last toured in 2017 during the Laugh Your Head Off tour which was around the time when she began having significant issues. She was featured in the documentary Hysterical which released this year and detailed the personal and road life of a number of different comedian.