Just days after “The Bachelor” and “Dancing with the Stars” alum Joe Amabile revealed that he has a brain tumor, he’s opened up about the symptoms he has or hasn’t experienced since being diagnosed.
He has also discussed what’s next when it comes to dealing with the unexpected and “scary” health issue.
A Scan First Led to the Discovery of Joe’s Tumor, Not Symptoms
While symptoms can give doctors a hint that a tumor might be present in some patients, that’s not the case for Amabile. On Monday, July 13, he shared an Instagram post that included a video in which he told his followers that it was a full-body scan that first found the issue and led to the diagnosis.
“So a little medical update. I didn’t share my Prenuvo results because they ended up finding a lesion in my brain,” Amabile said in the video. “So then I had to go get a brain MRI, and there was a blueberry-sized lesion in my brain that looks to be a glioma, which is a tumor.”
Getty“So I now need to get brain surgery to get it removed and get it tested, and then we’re gonna go from there,” he explained. “So it’s been a wild couple weeks. Definitely wasn’t expecting this.”
Amabile also noted that it hasn’t been easy to process what’s happened, saying, “I think it’s one of those things where you’re like, ‘Oh, something like this never happened to me,’ and here I am.”
He then told his followers, “They say it’s really early stages. I hope they are able to get it all, and I’m fine. But I will keep you updated.”
Joe Talked with His Wife About Symptoms
Amabile sat down for a chat with his wife, Serena Pitt, during an episode of their podcast, “Not Married to This,” that was released on Thursday, July 16, and, per People, “open[ed] up about how he’s been feeling since learning he has a brain tumor.” He also noted that “they refer to his diagnosis as an incidental finding because he wasn’t experiencing any severe symptoms prior.”
“For the most part, I don’t really have symptoms,” he said. “I mean, I could kind of go back. It’s hard now because now I do feel like I might have symptoms but some of those are self-induced. So that’s a difficult territory.”
Pitt did bring up the fact that Amabile had been having headaches while also dealing with both anxiety and nausea.
“I don’t have any headaches,” Amabile said in response. “The symptoms I’m having now are more like lightheadedness, and I think a lot of it now is more anxiety, I believe. But who knows?”
GettyHe continued, “What I would be experiencing more of where it is in my brain would be lack of motor skills, personality changes and memory loss.”
At the same time, Amabile explained that he’ll be undergoing surgery because it’s important to find out more about the tumor, otherwise, the situation “could potentially get worse very fast.”
He added, “The surgery is very dangerous, it’s a craniotomy, which is scary. It’s a serious surgery.”
Pitt also mentioned that the tumor is “slow-growing but the likelihood of it growing into something aggressive or problematic is very high.”
