Kassie DePaiva was initially identified with leukemia in 2016 and later with breast cancer, but she is currently cancer-free.
Actress Kassie DePaiva of “Days of Our Lives” is talking openly about her health experience.
Acute myeloid leukemia was DePaiva’s diagnosis in July 2016, not long after her comeback to the long-running soap drama as Eve Donovan. She had taken a flight to New York during a break in her schedule because she thought something wasn’t right.
“I went to a country jamboree up at Hunter Mountain, and I’m sitting on a chair lift… I feel under my arm, I go, ‘That’s weird.’ I felt two knots. So I thought, ‘Hmmm.’ And they weren’t painful. I know I didn’t feel bad, nothing,” she shared with “Dishing with Digest” podcast co-hosts Stephanie Sloane and Mara Levinsky.
The veteran actress, who also has held a role on “General Hospital,” continued, “I called and set up an appointment with my doctor and said, ‘Okay, coming back in July. Can you fit me in because I have these little knots? I just want to make sure everything’s okay.’ Well, did a biopsy, and you know the rest is history.”
After receiving her test results, she discovered that she didn’t have breast cancer (at the time), but instead received her leukemia diagnosis.
“I did get breast cancer a year later,” DePaiva shared. “I laugh and am like, ‘Can you believe it?’ But I had a lumpectomy and everything was clear and so right now, as it stands, I’m cancer-free and happy.”
After receiving a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia, the soap opera star talked about her experience through treatment. According to DePaiva, “I was explaining how chemo is just so awful for your body and how it’s not day to day, it’s minute to minute.” “You know, you think, ‘Okay, I’m gonna be good,’ and then you stand up and your body just starts ejecting,’… Are you going to pass out or are you going to vomit, I suppose.
She added, “It’s just yucky, and you just think, ‘This is never gonna end,’ and then it does, and then you go, ‘Did I go through with that?’ I cannot believe it, and that’s kind of where I am now with, like, ‘I can’t believe the journey,’ but I’m grateful.”
In August 2016, DePaiva shared her leukemia diagnosis on her blog and noted that she had spent six weeks in the hospital and expected to be hospitalized for longer.
“I have amazing prayer warriors, family, and friends that have been extremely supportive,” DePaiva wrote on her blog at the time. “Although I’m unable to be ‘camera ready’ now…my goal is (to) get back to stirring up trouble in Salem soon.” Since DePaiva is now cancer-free, she is expected to return as her role as Blair Cramer in new episodes of “General Hospital.”