Valerie Harper Has Terminal Cancer

Media | najia | March 7, 2013 at 4:29 pm

Valerie Harper Has Terminal Cancer: 73 year old Valerie Harper, who played the jolly role of Rhoda Morgenstern on TV, has revealed that she has Terminal Brain Cancer. Valerie Harper’s cancer was revealed on NBC’s ‘Today Show’ on Wednesday morning; the announcement was also made on the People’s Magazine website.

Valerie played the beloved role of Rhoda Morgenstern earlier on the television show ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’, and then on the show titled ‘Rhoda’.

News of Valerie Harper’s sickness first surfaced after she had suddenly left the rehearsal of ‘Loop’ – the Broadway show where she was scheduled to play the role of celebrated actress Tallulah Bankhead. Harper withdrew her name from the cast of ‘Loop’ and her sickness remained unnamed. The actress had already played Tallulah’s role on the original Broadway production, and she was supposed to reprise her role on this upcoming ‘Loop’ tour.

However, later on it was revealed that Valerie Harper is suffering from leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, which is a rare cancer that reaches to the fluid filled membranes in the brain. The most tragic part of the news is that according to her doctor, Valerie may have only three months to live.

Valerie Harper was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009, and apparently she had beaten the cancer away. But after news of her terminal cancer diagnosis, doctors are suggesting that this might be a derivative of her lung cancer. Harper’s cancer is also called neoplastic meningitis, which in medical terms is a cancer with an extremely high rate of mortality.

Describing the moment her terminal cancer was revealed to her, Valerie Harper stated that she was driving in Santa Monica when something ‘hit her like a sledgehammer’ and she felt something running from her back to her waist. She later vomited in the car, and earlier thought that she was having a seizure.

Later on during a day at ‘Loop’ rehearsals, she was rushed to the hospital where the doctors found cancerous cells in her spinal fluid.