‘7th Heaven’ Star Beverley Mitchell Reveals Cancer Scare

Beverley Mitchell is opening up about a shocking health scare as she encourages others to pay attention to their colon health.

The 7th Heaven star, 45, took to Instagram on Saturday to reveal that doctors found a massive precancerous polyp on her colon after she pushed to get a colonoscopy in her early 30s.

“Yesterday, I got a colonoscopy. I’m sharing this because I think that there’s a lot of people that are freaked out by it or embarrassed,” Mitchell began her video, adding, “I have no shame.”

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She continued, “Quite a few years ago, I had seen a doctor who looked at my blood work and was like, ‘Hey, I’m not saying anything, but it looks like you have markers that are similar to those that have colon cancer.’”

The Saw II actress then “demanded to get a colonoscopy” during a subsequent trip to the gastroenterologist’s office, only for doctors to find “the biggest precancerous polyp he has ever seen in a young woman.”

“Pretty much, I saved my own life because I advocated for myself,” she explained. “I followed up three years later and had another colonoscopy. It was perfectly clean.”

Mitchell, who is mom to children Kenzie, 13, Hutton, 11, and Mayzel, 5, with husband Michael Cameron, has admittedly fallen off-schedule with her colonoscopies since getting a clean bill of health, as her most recent exam came eight years after her first scare.

The Candy Cane Christmas star noted that she’d been “seeing a lot of signs” that it was time to schedule another colonoscopy, but it was the death of Dawson’s Creek star James Van Der Beek at age 48 last month following a battle with colorectal cancer that put her “over the edge.”

“If we get screened, go get our colonoscopies and pay attention, we can catch things early,” she told her followers. “I am happy to report that my colonoscopy came back perfectly clean, so now I’m on the five-year cycle. I’m no longer high-risk. Putting it off isn’t going to make the situation any better; it’s going to make it worse.”

Mitchell concluded, “This is my PSA that if you’ve been putting off your colonoscopy, go and get it now.”