Kathy Griffin Reveals She Underwent Vocal Surgery to Help Regain Her Voice After Cancer | “I’ll Be In Good Shape"

Kathy Griffin has had a rough couple of years but she's now bouncing back. The comedian lost her siblings to cancer: her brother died in 2014, following a stage 4 esophageal cancer diagnosis and her sister Joyce died at age 65 in 2017, after undergoing chemotherapy. Her heart sank when she learned she also was diagnosed with cancer with stage 1 lung cancer a couple of years ago. The 62-year-old underwent surgery for lung cancer in August 2021 and was soon declared cancer-free.

"I had surgery, you're not going to believe this — so, I've never smoked but I got lung cancer. In August, I had half of my left lung removed," I'm not even kidding," she told host Jimmy Kimmel on Jimmy Kimmel Live at the time. She pointed out that her voice was temporarily altered by an intubation tube affecting her vocal cord. "So now I'm like Minnie Mouse meets Marilyn Monroe," Griffin joked. "It will heal, but I'm sort of enjoying it. I'm a good two octaves higher, I think," she said, before laughing, "It's higher than Mariah Carey, I know that."

Earlier this month the actress shared a candid TikTok video that showed her before and after recent surgery on her left vocal cord “because I want to be in good shape for my big Vegas show on June 17.” She warned viewers that the video was graphic. “I so appreciate you guys following along on my journey to get my voice back after #lungcancer ! Big shout out to Dr.Barbu,” Griffin captioned the video.

The clip showed Griffin at a “pre-op appointment," where she told fans watching she was undergoing surgery the next morning. “This is a really kick-ass female voice surgeon,” Griffin explained. The doctors could be seen performing a laryngoscopy and the video featured a view of her throat and vocal cords. “Yes I know my vocal chords look like a mini v*gina. Deal with it," she joked. The D-List star also revealed what happened after the surgery when she says from a hospital bed, “I’m a little scratchy today, but I’ll be in good shape.” Griffin added that her latest surgery is “part of my recovery post-lung cancer surgery. I’m cancer free.” 

Lung cancer is the second most common type of cancer, according to Cancer.org. "It's a lot more common than people realize," Dr. Nathan Pennell, a lung cancer specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, told PEOPLE. Researchers are unsure if the rise in lung cancer cases among non-smokers is because "it's truly more common and more people are getting it, or whether it's just a higher percentage of people with lung cancer are non-smokers because fewer people are smoking. Less than 15 percent of adults in the U.S. are smoking now, which is fantastic, so a higher percentage of the cases of lung cancer in the last five or six years are in non-smokers."

References:

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/lung-cancer/about/key-statistics.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl_cn3VahOM&ab_channel=JimmyKimmelLive

https://people.com/health/kathy-griffin-got-lung-cancer-despite-never-smoking-heres-what-to-know-about-the-condition/

Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Gregg DeGuire