Busy Philipps, 47, reveals she's been diagnosed with a rare brain tumour after Dawson's Creek co-star James Van Der Beek's death encouraged her to go for a scan

Dawson's Creek star Busy Philipps has revealed she has been diagnosed with a rare brain tumour.

The actress, 47, was diagnosed in February after undergoing a full-body MRI scan the day after her co-star James Van Der Beek's death from colon cancer at the age of 48. 

She underwent surgery in early March just weeks before she started filming her new  show Cupertino, admitting: 'I'm grateful that I'm alive,' and adding it has been 'the weirdest six months of my life'.

Busy said she had no symptoms of the grade 2 oligodendroglioma, a rare slow-growing tumor that is found in just 1,100 to 1,300 people per year in the US

The lesion was only discovered after she was inspired to undergo the MRI scan, which checks for more than 500 conditions, after reading about it on Instagram. 

Speaking to People Magazine about her health ordeal, Busy explained how her scan was initially scheduled for January, but a blizzard forced her to push the appointment to February 12, the day after her friend James died. 

Talking with her ex-husband and close friend, Marc Silverstein, she considered cancelling the scan amid her grief for James and a busy work period.. 

But Marc told her James would want her to find out more about her health. 'He's like, 'Maybe it's the best thing you could do for your friend this morning. Go get that scan.''

The scan showed a lesion on her brain but thankfully glioblastoma, an aggressive cancerous tumor with no cure, was quickly ruled out. 

Her doctor instructed her to get a follow-up MRI as early as possible to get a better look at the lesion. She recalled the phone call when her doctor told her "This is a real tumor, and it's inside your brain. And Busy, it's got to come out," I was hyperventilating and trying to breathe.'

The actress underwent a five-hour procedure a month later to remove the 2.6 centimeter tumour, with Marc, who is the father of her daughters Birdie, 17, and Cricket, 13, supporting her at the hospital.

Busy recalled telling her daughters about the diagnosis and her eldest 'was kind of beside herself and really, really scared and overwhelmed with emotion'.

'I just kept saying to her, "Birdie, you’re just not in the movie where your mom dies your senior year of high school. That’s just not the movie that you’re in. I promise you."'

Meanwhile, Cricket's 'reaction when I told her was like, "Okay. You’re going to be fine?" And I was like, "I’m totally going to be fine."

The tumour was biopsied and it was discovered to be malignant, with her doctor advising 'it has the best prognosis of all of the malignant gliomas.' 

In April though, Busy was back in hospital after she contracted staphylococcus in her incision, undergoing another surgery to clear the infection.

The infection was discovered when Busy's dermatologist noticed the incision site didn’t look right during a Botox appointment. 

'The second surgery really threw me. I just felt like I was back to square one, and I was really, really upset,' Busy, who had just started filming her new show at the time, admitted. 

She has now reflected that some of her 'extreme emotional reactions' she'd been experiencing over the past couple of years were a result of the tumor pressing on her frontal lobe, and not perimenopause as she'd always assumed.

Whilst her doctors can't be sure if these were symptoms, Busy's best friend and Dawson's co-star Michelle Williams, who helped take care of her after her surgery, pointed out to her:

''Busy, you have been saying for the past two years, My brain feels broken.' And she was right. I have. I've been saying this for the last few years. . . . I wasn't consciously aware that anything was really wrong, but there was something that was misfiring.' 

'Like, I could not get a handle on it. My brain does not feel broken anymore.'

Speaking on Instagram on Wednesday, Busy explained that she had been keeping her loved ones up to date over the past six months via the Close Friends function on Instagram.

She said she wanted to keep the news to her inner circle in order to protect her daughters from 'having to deal with the added insanity of their mom talking about it publicly.'

She added that she also had to start filming her show Cupertino 'just four and a half weeks' after her first surgery 'and I just had to f**king lock in and just get through it.'

Busy also told her followers how grateful she was that she decided to have the MRI scan, admitting 'to be honest I didn't een have a job when I did it and I was a bit like "this is a stupid amount of money that I'm spending" but I did it anyway.' 

Whilst she has only just publicly revealed her diagnosis, Busy did hint at her health issues in a March 19 Instagram post, writing that it had been 'literally weirdest 2.5 weeks of my life.'

'i can’t wait to write book 2…. here’s what i know. i know this: i love my daughters. i love my friends. i love my dog and cats. i love my ex-husband(legal husband still lol) i f**king hate war and the cold and ready for that to be over but seriously, how lucky we are to be anything at all?'

 'Just to exist is a gift. happy new moon. plant the seeds. let’s move the f**k on. hand on my heart. hand on my stupid heart.'