Alex Kingston has finally opened up about her shocking cancer diagnosis.
Speaking to The Independent in an interview published on Friday, October 10, the Doctor Who actress flashed back to her performance last summer in the stage production of The Other Boleyn Girl at the UK arts celebrations, Chichester Festival, during which she faced a frightening health scare.
While performing onstage, the actress began to bleed uncontrollably; however, she bravely continued the show without letting the audience know, thanks to her oversized gown and knee pads.
The Strictly Come Dancing alum revealed that she first began to feel cramps and bloated 18 months ago, saying, “I had assumed that the way I was feeling was old age, and I just sort of accepted it.”
“I thought, ‘OK, this is what it’s like to be in my sixties.’ But a lot of how I was feeling was to do with my illness,” the actress continued, sharing that she sought medical care after noticing blood in her urine.
She added, “I never went down the cancer road in my head … Even though my body was telling me there was something very seriously wrong, I kept thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve got a bad UTI or fibroids.’”
However, after the frightening onstage moment last year, Kingston found out she was suffering from cancer in her fallopian tubes.
“That night on stage, I hemorrhaged. That night on stage, I hemorrhaged. The wardrobe women were incredible. I ran off stage and said, ‘Grab me some pads!’ We shoved some pads in my pants and I went back on stage and carried on. That was how we finished the show,” she revealed.
The Chasing Shadows star shared that the cancer had not spread, so she needed a hysterectomy and also underwent radiations, admitting that the diagnosis and treatment were difficult to accept.
“The minute I had the operation, I suddenly felt like myself again,” she told the outlet, adding, “Womb cancer is really tricky because it is so sneaky. The body does know – and that was the body saying to me, ‘Help! There’s something really wrong.’ It’s so important to seek advice and have a check-up.”
Alex Kingston is currently competing on the UK reality competition show Strictly Come Dancing.
