Soap Star Kassie DePaiva Reveals She Was Diagnosed with Breast Cancer Shortly After Battle with Leukemia

Soap star Kassie DePaiva is getting candid about her health.

The Days of Our Lives actress, opened up on the latest episode of the Dishing with Digest podcast about how she found out she had leukemia and revealed that she had another health scare a year after her leukemia diagnosis.

She said she was initially diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in July 2016 after returning as Eve Donovan on Days of Our Lives. She said she had flown back to New York during a schedule break when she figured out something was wrong.

“I went to a country jamboree up at Hunter Mountain and I’m sitting on a chair lift… I feel under my arm, I go, ‘That’s weird.’ I felt two knots. So I thought, ‘Hmmm.’ And they weren’t painful. I know I didn’t feel bad, nothing,” DePaiva said.

She continued, “I called and set up an appointment with my doctor and said, ‘Okay, coming back in July. Can you fit me in because I have these little knots? I just want to make sure everything’s okay.’ Well, did a biopsy, and you know the rest is history.”

She said results came back to show that she didn’t have breast cancer but acute myeloid leukemia instead. However, there was another health twist on the horizon for the actress.

“I did get breast cancer a year later. I laugh and am like, ‘Can you believe it?’ But I had a lumpectomy and everything was clear and so right now, as it stands, I’m cancer free and happy.”

The veteran soap actress also discussed with the podcast hosts from Soap Opera Digest, Stephanie Sloane and Mara Levinsky, the challenges of having to deal with chemotherapy after her leukemia diagnosis.

“I was explaining how chemo is just so awful for your body and how it’s not day to day, it’s minute to minute,” she said, noting that she had previously spoken to Sloane about some of the difficulties. “You know, you think, ‘Okay, I’m gonna be good,’ and then you get up and all of a sudden your body eliminates… I mean it was, are you faint or are you gonna throw up?”

“It’s just yucky and you just think, ‘This is never gonna end,’ and then it does and then you go, ‘Did I go through with that?’ I cannot believe it, and that’s kind of where I am now with, like, ‘I can’t believe the journey,’ but I’m grateful,” she added.

DePaiva first announced her leukemia diagnosis in a post on her blog in August, 2016, revealing that she had spent at least six weeks in the hospital with more anticipated treatment to come.

“I have amazing prayer warriors, family, and friends that have been extremely supportive,” she wrote at the time. “Although I’m unable to be ‘camera ready’ now…my goal is (to) get back to stirring up trouble in Salem soon.”

Now that DePaiva is back in fighting form, she is set to reprise her popular One Life to Live role as Blair Cramer in upcoming episodes of General Hospital.

General Hospital airs daily on ABC. Check your local news listings for scheduling.