The Big Bang Theory star Kate Micucci has revealed she has lung cancer.
The actress, 43, who played Raj’s love interest Lucy in the show in eight episodes between 2013-2017, took to TikTok on Saturday to document her recovery after a successful surgery to remove the disease.
While lying in a hospital bed attached to a drip, she said: ‘Hey everybody, this is not a TikTok, it’s a Sick Tok.
‘I’m in the hospital but it’s because I had lung cancer surgery yesterday. They caught it really early.”
‘It’s really weird, because I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life so uh, you know, it was a surprise. But also I guess, also, it happens and so the greatest news is they caught it early, they got it out, I’m all good.
‘It’s been a little bit of a trip and (I’ll) probably be moving slow for a few weeks but then I’ll be back at it.’
‘Why am I still talking… ‘cause I’m on drugs!’
Revealing how she was first diagnosed, she said: ‘I had one thing in my bloodwork that came back really high.
‘So I went to a preventative doc who did a few scans. He scanned my heart and that’s where the spot in my lung was noticed.’
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the US. It is detected using a low-dose computed tomography scan (CT scan).
One in six people will be diagnosed with lung cancer in their lifetime, and more than 127,000 lives are lost annually.
A recent report by the ACS found that young women are suffering higher rates of lung cancer than men.
Men were nearly twice as likely as women to develop the disease in the 1980s, driven by higher smoking rates and workplace exposure to substances like asbestos.
But with declining cigarette use and safety regulations, the pattern has flipped, with young and middle-aged women now being diagnosed with the disease at higher rates than men.
There were around 65 new cases of lung cancer for every 100,000 people in 1992 and by 2019 this had come down to about 42.
Despite the progress, a disparity among sexes is emerging, with women between the ages of 35 and 54 being diagnosed with lung cancer at higher rates than men in that same age group.
Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of lung cancer, and while there have been huge drops in overall smoking rates, women have been slower to quit.
By sex, about 67,000 men die from lung cancer every year compared to 59,910 women.