Mark Ruffalo Reveals He was Diagnosed with a Tumor Just Days Before Welcoming His First Child with Wife!
- Mark Ruffalo reflected on being diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2001.
- The star said that he found out about the tumor just days before he and his wife welcomed their first child.
- Ruffalo kept his tumor a secret from his heavily pregnant wife at the time.
Mark Ruffalo recalls his deadly tumor two decades later
Mark Ruffalo is getting candid about his brain tumor diagnosis after more than two decades later.
The Hulk star, 56, appeared on Monday’s episode of the Smartless podcast with hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett. During the show, he recalled being diagnosed with a benign vestibular schwannoma in 2001.
Ruffalo said, “I had a brain tumor after the success of You Can Count on Me,”
Noting that he found out about the tumor after dreaming about it, Mark said,
“It wasn’t like any other dream I’d ever had. It was just like, ‘You have a brain tumor.’ It wasn’t even a voice. It was just pure knowledge, ‘You have a brain tumor, and you have to deal with it immediately.'”
The Marvel actor noted that the dream was so intense that he visited the doctor for a CAT scan after feeling a “sense of doom.” The only symptom he had at the time was an ear infection.
Mark recalled,
“The nurse calls the doctor up, I could hear them talking in the other room.”
”She comes in, she’s kinda like a zombie and she says, ‘You have a mass behind your left ear the size of a golf ball, and we don’t know what it is. We can’t tell until it’s biopsied,’”
Ruffalo said that a surgery was required to remove the tumor mass. He decided to hide the bad news from his wife Sunrise Coigney, who was heavily pregnant with their first child, son Keen, now 22.
How did Mark’s wife react to his tumor news?
He also informed his wife about his condition a week after she gave birth to their son, which was the night before his appointment to “meet the neurologist” and figure out a treatment plan.
Ruffalo said,
“When I told Sunny about it, first she thought I was joking,”
“And then she just burst into tears and said, ‘I always knew you were gonna die young.'”
Then doctors removed his benign tumor through a surgical procedure. He was well informed at the time that during the procedure, there was a 20% chance of “killing” the nerve on the left side of his face and a 70% chance of losing the hearing in his left ear.
Recalling the post effect of the surgery, Ruffalo said,
“[I am] completely deaf in one ear, and when I woke up, the left side of my face was totally paralyzed,”
“I couldn’t even close my eye. I was talking out the side of my mouth.”
Luckily, the paralysis went away after a year but he still suffers from hearing loss today.
Ruffalo recalled on the show,
“Take my hearing, but let me keep the face and just let me be the father to these kids,”
The couple later welcomed daughters Bella Noche and Odette.
Also, Read Michael Bolton cancels tour dates after brain tumor diagnosis and surgery!
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Posted on: Thursday, January 25 2024
