Home and Away star Johnny Ruffo has spoken out about his heartbreaking cancer diagnosis in a new interview.
The actor revealed he had been suffering intense migraines, but after a CT and MRI scan, he was told the truth.
The 29-year-old learned he’d had a 7cm tumour in the right frontal lobe of his brain – which turned out to be cancerous – and doctors warned Ruffo he would die unless he had emergency surgery to remove it.
Ruffo quickly had the surgery and revealed that following the serious operation, for the first few days he was incoherent. “I was talking garbage, even worse than usual,” he told New Idea.
“Within days I was back to being myself again. I felt a lot better, lighter. I was confident, I was just sure it was all fine. The tumour was going to be benign, no problem.”
Sadly, only a week later, the actor and his family received devastating news from doctors who revealed the growth was a malignant stage three oligodendroglioma – a rare cancer affecting only about three per cent of brain tumour patients, according to Cancer Research UK.
“There was a lot of medical jargon, but by all accounts, this responds really well to radiotherapy and chemo so they are pretty confident they can beat it, which is good news,” explains Ruffo.
At the moment the star is undertaking radiotherapy five days a week for six weeks –30 treatments in total.
Following the radiotherapy, Ruffo will have a four-week break while his progress is assessed. New Idea also reports that he will most likely have six months of chemotherapy after that.
“Hopefully, I’ll be home and hosed after that,” he revealed.
This article originally appeared on WHO
