Michelle Stafford reflected on the early days of her career and the medical diagnosis that threw a wrench into her plans in a 1995 interview with Soap Opera Digest. After high school, Stafford pursued acting and modeling, but after a year of no success, she decided to focus on television commercials. Then she faced a setback when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. “It was so bizarre. My left eyelid kept swelling and I didn’t know why. I went to a doctor, who took an X-ray. That’s how I found out.” Stafford admitted she was actually relieved by the diagnosis “because I finally knew what was wrong — and I knew that the tumor was not malignant.”
Stafford shared more during a November 2016 episode of her podcast, “Single Mom a Go-Go.” Before surgery, “I was like, yeah, I’m just gonna get brain surgery and get the tumor taken out… I really did have that attitude,” Stafford detailed. As she was wheeled into surgery, Stafford recalled seeing people and cars going about life as usual outside the windows. At that moment, she realized, “Whoa, those people don’t know how I feel right now.” At the time, it “seemed very odd to me, such a disconnect of life.” She admitted, “I was pretty terrified at this moment, and I thought, oh, don’t ever forget this feeling, because nothing you go through in your life will ever be this difficult.”
