"Big Bang Theory" actor Kate Micucci shared that she has been treated for lung cancer, which came as a surprise to her considering she's never smoked.
Micucci, 43, who played Lucy on eight episodes of the hit CBS sitcom, shared a health update in a TikTok video from a hospital bed on Dec. 9.
“Hey everybody, this is not a TikTok, it’s a ‘SickTok,’” she said in the video. “I’m in the hospital, but it’s because I had lung cancer surgery yesterday. They caught it really early.”
The diagnosis was unexpected given Micucci's health history.
"It’s pretty weird because I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life so it was a surprise, but also I guess it happens," she said. "And so the greatest news is they caught it early, they got it out, I’m all good."
The artist and comedian, who's also appeared on "Scrubs" and "Will & Grace," shared how doctors first discovered it.
"I had one thing in my bloodwork that came back really high," she wrote in the TikTok comments. "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."
Smoking remains the greatest risk factor to getting lung cancer, but doctors have found that more young women who are nonsmokers are getting diagnosed with it.
“We don’t really know why that’s happening, but we are seeing the trend,” Dr. Michael Ebright, director of thoracic surgery at Stamford Hospital and clinical associate professor of thoracic surgery at Columbia University Medical Center, told TODAY.com last month. "But the incidence of lung cancer in women who are nonsmokers is twice as high as men who are nonsmokers.”
Ebright added that more treatments are now available for lung cancers found in nonsmokers.
Lung cancer is the second-most common cancer in the U.S. in both men and women, but only "a very small number" of cases are diagnosed in people under 45, like Micucci, according to the American Cancer Society. The disease is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S.
"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," Micucci said in the video. "Can’t wait to be painting more. Which, I’ll be painting soon I think. Why am I still talking? Because I’m on drugs."
She added a video of her rolling her IV drip down a hallway in her gown while walking alongside a hospital worker. Another shot showed her smiling while holding up a box of cereal and a banana in her hospital bed.