‘ER’ Star Reveals Womb Cancer Diagnosis

ER alum Alex Kingston is opening up about her “womb cancer” diagnosis for the first time.

The 62-year-old British actress, who played Dr. Elizabeth Corday in the NBC medical drama, revealed her diagnosis in an interview with The Independent that was published Friday.

Kingston revealed that she first thought the bloating and aching she had experienced for years were simply part of aging until she noticed blood in her urine last year.

“I had assumed that the way I was feeling was old age, and I just sort of accepted it. I thought, ‘OK, this is what it’s like to be in my 60s,’” the Doctor Who actress said. “But a lot of how I was feeling was to do with my illness.”

“I never went down the cancer road in my head,” she continued. “It was a shock, because I have a very positive outlook on life in general. Even though my body was telling me there was something very seriously wrong, I kept thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve got a bad UTI or fibroids.’”

Kingston also recalled experiencing a “really shocking” hemorrhage while performing in The Other Boleyn Girl last spring. Luckily, Kingston said her heavy Tudor-era costume and knee pads helped her cover up the incident as she “just knocked my knees together and prayed that it would soak everything up.”

“The wardrobe women were incredible,” she added. “I ran off-stage and said, ‘Grab me some pads!’ We shoved some pads in my pants and I went back on stage and carried on. That was how we finished the show.”

Kingston was diagnosed with cancer after the play’s run, noting that it had spread to her fallopian tubes but not her ovaries, and she spent most of the rest of the year undergoing treatment.

“I had a major operation. I had to have a hysterectomy, I had to go into radiation therapy, and that took up a huge part of my life,” she said, adding, “Despite having gone through all of that — and any cancer is really tough to accept, to steel yourself to go through all of the necessary procedures to get back into health — the minute I had the operation, I suddenly felt like myself again.”