Better Homes and Gardens star reveals health scare
Better Homes and Gardens star Melissa King has revealed the details of her "terrifying" health scare, which began with a series of migraines.
King wanted to keep her condition away from the public eye, until her face went into an uncontrollable spasm live during a broadcast segment on Sunrise.
The spasms have now become a part of Melissa's life, after she was diagnosed with a benign tumour on the lining of her brain.
Chatting candidly with Australian Women's Weekly, the mother-of-two revealed when she was diagnosed with the meningioma, and when she decided it was time to tell others about her health battle.
“I could feel the stretching and tightening as the right side of my face contorted, and I knew everyone watching at home could see it too,” she told the publication.
“That morning was awful. I could hear the producers say, ‘Melissa, are you okay?’”
Melissa first began experiencing migraines in her teenage years, before going to see a doctor in 2017 as they progressively got worse.
She was then referred to a neurologist, who recommended an MRI which revealed a meningioma, a non-cancerous tumour located in her brain lining, a discovery Melissa said was “terrifying,” despite her tumour being classified as benign.
Whilst a meningioma is most often benign - many people may have one without even knowing - in other cases it can be potentially life-threatening.
After her initial diagnosis, Melissa underwent six-monthly MRI scans to monitor her tumour, and for four years, it remained stable in size.
But in 2021, when Melissa had become a mother of two boys, Noah, now 11, and Marlon, nine, doctors had noticed her tumour had grown in size.
Doctors offered her one of two choices - brain surgery to remove it, or radiotherapy to shrink it.
She chose the "less invasive" option of radiotherapy, and incredibly, during a two-week break from work, she undertook her entire 15 sessions, heading off to the hospital each morning and coming home to sleep at night.
Relatively new to her role on Better Homes and Gardens, she decided to keep her health ordeal quiet.
“I just wanted to be able to take each step quietly with my family around me,” she told Australian Women’s Weekly.