Kate Mansi is beloved for her roles on popular soaps “General Hospital” and “Days of Our Lives,” and she is using her platform for good. To raise awareness for March’s Endometriosis Awareness Month, Mansi is opening up about her health and how, were it not for her stepfather, she could have died.
Kate Mansi Shares ‘Scary’ Story About Emergency Surgery
Mansi was diagnosed with endometriosis in 2015, after she was hospitalized and had an emergency surgery. In the days leading up to this event, she had been in tremendous pain and was experiencing heavy bleeding and nausea, People reports. She knew something was wrong, and she had been to see doctors multiple times, but they “just kept dismissing it,” she told People in an interview published on March 11.
She continued, “I think as a society we are so ingrained to just listen to what the doctors say and abandon what we feel. I went into these appointments, and they said, ‘Oh, maybe the pain is because your IUD is turning.’ And then I would do an ultrasound. No, it’s not my IUD. ‘Okay, well maybe it’s just a bad period.’ I was getting really nauseous, and I had been throwing up for days, and they said maybe I had the flu. Maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that.”
Even when she arrived in the hospital with “an 11-centimeter mass in her abdomen,” People reports, the medical professionals were not certain what to do. Her stepfather, who is an OB-GYN, declared that she needed immediate surgery. “My stepdad was so frustrated — and because he’s my stepfather, so it’s not a blood relation — he scrubbed in himself and was like, ‘I’m not waiting for an oncologist. I’m gonna do the surgery or she’s not gonna make it,’” she shared. “And he did a surgery that ended up saving my life.”
Kate Mansi Is Lucky to Be Alive
GettyMansi discussed the terrible pain she had been in and how it was an ovarian cyst rupturing. “The ovarian cyst coincidentally was sitting on top of a blood vessel. So when it burst, it hit the blood vessel, and then it leaked a liter and a half of blood into my abdomen,” she said. “All the blood had coagulated together into this 11-centimeter mass, cutting off blood and oxygen. He obviously took it out, but then he found all this endometriotic tissue.”
She called the moment “scary” and revealed how she had to have blood transfusions after her blood loss. It was her stepfather who diagnosed her with endometriosis, which is not something she had heard of before. Mansi also reflected on how she had normal menstrual cycles when she was younger and had not thought that she could have had a condition like endometriosis, which is when uterine tissue grows outside of the uterus.
Mansi’s decision to share her story helps raise awareness of the condition and highlights the importance of advocating for yourself when you believe something is wrong. This is particularly true for women’s reproductive health. There are many women who have been dismissed while suffering from a chronic condition. DWTS alum Bindi Irwin and model Barbara Palvin have both bravely spoken about their struggles with endometriosis to raise awareness, and the hope is that the more people who do, the better the outcome.
