When we last talked about Kelly Clarkson, she was excitedly taking a tour of the set of her talk show, which is debuting September 9. She seemed to be recovering well after her appendectomy at the beginning of May. Despite being in pain for a week before the BMAs, she hosted and performed, and then was flown immediately to Cedars Sinai for the procedure. It turned out that she wasn’t completely out of the woods health-wise: a cyst on one of her ovaries burst while she was filming an episode of The Voice. Kelly covers the new issue of People, and she talked about her second on-air health scare:
“Blake [Shelton] was talking to me and all of the sudden, everything he said just went away and I had to grab his arm and I was like, ‘Something is wrong.’”
And that something, she later learned, was a cyst bursting on her ovary. “That was more painful than the appendicitis,” she says. “It was literally a week after my surgery so I was freaking out!”
After another trip to a busy E.R. (“I was like, ‘Anyone a fan? can someone help me get a hospital room?’”) Clarkson now says all is well. But the random back-to-back health scares did throw her for a loop.
“I was hysterically laughing and crying at one point in the E.R. like ‘What is happening?’” she says. Thankfully, “I’m great now. I’m totally great now.”
Kelly also spoke about how she enjoys being busy, but that one of her priorities when working on the schedule for her show was making sure that she had enough family time:
“I love being busy,” says Clarkson, who’s currently filming for The Voice as well as her show. “The schedule is intense but I actually work really well under pressure.”
But when it came to scheduling in time for her kids—daughter River Rose, 5, and son Remington Alexander, 3, as well as daughter Savannah, 18, and son Seth, 12, from [her husband]’s previous marriage—Clarkson, who’s known for her hilarious mom-life commentary on social media, made that a non-negotiable.
Poor Kelly. A burst cyst is painful and terrifying no matter what, but I can’t imagine how much more of a wreck she was since her cyst burst a week after her appendectomy. I find that whenever I have a medical procedure, I’m on extra-high alert after for any unexplained twinges or aches, in case whatever hasn’t actually been resolved. I’m so glad that she’s doing well, and hope that she has no more health scares! I think it’s funny that she asked if anyone in the ER was a fan, hoping to get herself into a room and seen faster (I don’t blame her)! I also think it’s great that she started off work on her show by figuring out a schedule that works for her (and presumably her staff) and will enable her to spend time with her family. Hopefully that will help keep her relaxed and happy as she juggles so many work commitments.
Having a cyst burst it like having lava poured into your abdomen, it’s insane. I had symptoms leading up to it and now I’m paranoid about those symptoms because I never want to go through that again. I have a high pain tolerance but this was insane, I was crouched on the side of the bed unable to move at all or speak at all, thinking I must be dying. Thank goodness it passes and the body heals but then you KNOW and you fear it ever happening again!
Kelly is a good sport, as usual!
That must have been scary! Glad she’s doing well know.
I’m not really one for daytime talk shows, but I will probably check out some of hers, she’s funny and seems really nice.
That really sucks. It seems like health issues seem to hit one after the other for some people – unfortunately I tend to also be one of those people lol.
But you know what? Kelly seems like kind of a shit person. Between the whole spanking thing and the asking if anyone is a fan in an attempt to get herself seen sooner, she really bugs. I’m sorry, you just don’t do that.
I assume that triage is done essentially the same way in the States as it is in Canada – and while it’s not a perfect system, it’s an attempt to deal with the people who need help ASAP first. It’s REALLY not funny when you’ve been sitting in the waiting room in mind numbing pain for 10 hours and someone pulls some strings to get pushed through ahead. I have had to wait with what turned out to be a really bad UTI/Kidney infection(and I’m someone who’s used to pain – it takes A LOT to make me go into the ER) for a total of 11 hours one day while around the 9 or 10 hour mark someone brought their kid in. The kid was running around, playing with toys, clearly not feeling THAT bad. I think he had some poison ivy, honestly. But his grandmother shows up after he and his mother got there and was like “Huh. Well you’re not going to wait all night – let me talk to the nurses” and stormed into the back and a few minutes later they pulled the kid in to get checked by the Dr. She was a nurse supervisor who’d retired in the last year or two an legit pulled some strings and had this kid who was itchy but otherwise loving life seen ahead of myself and a few other patients who’d been waiting for ages.
It might seem funny when someone is as “awww shucks, I’m just a kid slapping redneck y’all” like Kelly has profited off of being, but I can tell you it is never funny to abuse the system like that.
That said, I wouldn’t wish that condition on anyone – it sounds horrible. But follow the rules, my god.
I took the “anyone a fan?” comment as self-deprecating tongue-in-cheek…
I mean, hopefully. But if she’s saying it even as a joke – it’s going to influence people. Most people are at least somewhat star struck by celebrities and they tend to go above and beyond for them. Not everyone, of course. But I’d argue most.
Based on what I’ve seen of her, I’d assume it was said in a joking way, and a not a “don’t you know who I am?” kind of thing.
Where I live they have separate sections in the ER for adults and children which eliminates some of the delay for both.
That’s actually kind of genius.
@Erinn – Playing Devil’s advocate here, but hospital staff may have just been being extra cautious and following protocol. A rash could be measles, MRSA, ect. I had MSRA, and you wouldn’t believe how fast I was taken back and isolated! I was a “walking” (couldn’t actually walk, cuz the sores were largely on my legs), talking potential public health crisis.
That said, grandmother sounds like she was just an entitled twat lol
When I had problems with cysts on my ovaries, the doctors kept asking whether it could be appendicitis, despite my having had an appendectomy when I as 11! I can’t imagine how freaked out KC must have been with it being so close to her appy, she must have assumed something had gone really wrong. Poor lass.
I was 15 and they decided I was pregnant and having a miscarriage. They told us to just sit in the waiting room. I was writhing in pain and crying for close to two hours in the rather empty waiting room. They called a guy to go in and he refused until they took me first. They then separated me from my parents and either ignored me for long periods of time or asked me repeated questions about my non-existent pregnancy. The woman who took a blood sample was particularly brutal. They finally let my mom in and continued with the pregnancy questions over my mom’s objections that I didn’t even have a boyfriend. No, I must be lying. They only stopped with the pregnancy questions when the pregnancy test and blood work came back negative . Only then did they consider that it might be an ovarian cyst, which my mother had suggested it was when we first arrived because she had had them as a girl. I later learned that this treatment is not uncommon.
I don’t understand why it isn’t procedure with a woman with lower abdominal pain to just do the darn ultrasound first. Instead of all the dance around appendicitis/pregnancy roobarb.
Oh my God this is infuriating, Lightpurple! The way you were treated was just awful.
@Harryq, yes, but as I said, I learned that how I was treated wasn’t unusual. When I had the second one rupture, I was in college and I went to the student health center. They wanted me to go to the ER and I refused. I knew what was wrong and I wasn’t going to put myself through that again. The nurses understood and took good care of me.
I am so sorry you went through that. How awful.
And I bet none of them apologized to you for getting it wrong and being so rude.
My normally quiet, shy, and reserved Dad, who was forced to stay out in the waiting room was livid. He told them that he wouldn’t consent to his insurance being billed for the pregnancy test and no, he wasn’t paying for it separately. He didn’t want anyone thinking his 15 year old was out needing pregnancy tests and it was completely unnecessary as we had repeatedly told them there was no chance I was pregnant and they wasted time ignoring an actual medical problem with their misdiagnosis. They took it off the bill.
What is this thing with the pregnancy and doctors. I was hurting in my stomach and abdomen in a very specific place and told the nurse and doctor over and over that I hadn’t had sex in years. They did my preg test twice. They just didn’t want to explore other options. Thank God I have a bad temper because otherwise with that pace my apendix would have burst. Just told them to F of and do an ultrasound or whatever is called. Yep I was not prego just and old normal apendix that was ready to explode.
Funny story: an old doc came to do the operation and the bitch nurse told him that they were suspecting a pregnancy at first (spontaneous abortion or something). He looked at her, looked at me and told her that my baby must be the devil then because I was turning green. Better if he took it out himself. The nurse was speechless. I laughed in pain.
In my late teens, I had a ruptured ovarian cyst and a hot appendix at the same time. The pain was so immense I had to be carried folded up like a shrimp to the car and into the ER. I endured a pelvic exam (my first) that told the docs nothing, so the whisked me off to surgery. It was just a holy mess, but I think having one thing after another would be possibly more terrifying.
I’ve gone through both at different times… I can’t even imagine the pain you were in? Whew!
Hoot, even 50 years later I can remember every moment vividly. God.
I’ve rrally never understood why people, especially famous people, feel that they need to tell the world about their medical problems and procedures. Advocating for rare diseases is one thing, but no one needs to head the details of your various innards bursting. And the “anyone a fan?” comment is disgusting, even if she meant it as a joke—just the fact that it entered her mind speaks to an enormous sense of entitlement.
Women’s health issues have historically been ignored by science and seen as taboo. Let’s break those cycles, shall we? Next up: let’s talk more openly about the pain and power of menopause.
Having an ovarian cyst burst remains the worse pain I’ve ever had in my life. And like many other women, I was dismissed and ignored and told by my male doctor at 16 that I had to get used to having periods.
It was only an ultrasound a month later that revealed it had ruptured. I never had any treatment and just had to endure it.
More than twenty five years later, I’m still enraged about it and him.
I’m glad Kelly had access to treatment and I wish that all girls and women were taken seriously by medical professionals.
Same for me. I had a large ovarian cyst my first year of college. It was so painful that I eventually ended up in the emergency room. I was there for hours being prodded/tested/interrogated about my sex life (I was abstinent at the time, but they were very sure it was ectopic pregnancy or an STD) until they decided to ultrasound and realized what it was. I was told to “go home and take advil” by my male doctor, at which point I broke down sobbing because the percocet they had given me at the hospital was barely controlling the pain.
Luckily for me, I have an uncle who is a doctor and my parents called him to just write a fucking prescription for me after that. I still had hospital bills up the wazoo for all the unnecessary tests they did on me. It still makes me angry to this day. Women’s health has always been and continues to be a political battle ground for controlling and abusing women.
Ugh still remembered when this happened to me. I ended up at the emergency room at 11pm. I was convinced I was dying. I never experienced pain like this before and since and I had a c-section! It was crazy.
I’ll be the shallow one here: why do women take perfectly good hair, dye it yellow (that is NOT blonde) and turn it into a straw-like material? Why would women rather have that than being a lovely brunette? What does the world have against brown hair?
Rant over, sorry, I’ll see myself out.
PS: I regularly have ovarian cysts that appear and disappear (magic!) and live in fear of one of them bursting. Poor everyone who had to go through that. It’s apparently unbearable.
What is the treatment for a burst ovarian cyst? Is it just pain management?
Once the incident is over the pain is over. For me it was forty minutes of outlandish insane pain, then a few hours of severe ache, then just feeling tender for a day.
With regular cysts that don’t rupture, like during ovulation for some lucky women, the treatment is warm bath, NSAIDs, and it lasts for about a day. That is very uncomfortable but not like the urgent pain of a rupture.
But you should always get checked, even if you endure the rupture at home. You could have fluid from the cyst that doesn’t drain properly and end up with an infected ovary. I’ve had that happen when I was in my early twenties, I was uninsured and got to the point of being feverish and dangerously ill. Planned parenthood saved my life with extremely strong antibiotics.
Last cyst rupture I had, I was checked by an OBGYN the next day and there was no remaining fluid so my body had worked it out on its own. But never leave it up to chance! An infected ovary is no joke.
I wrote all that in case someone on here has a rupture at home and feels better the next day: STILL always go to your OBGYN the next day to be checked.
Totally agree CharliePenn. I have trouble with ovarian cysts and my gyn wanted to do a hysterectomy to stop them. (I’m 50 so it’s not like I’m having any more babies or anything) I declined since they usually would be uncomfortable and burst which is painful but I could handle that easier than a surgery. That was until last year when one extremely large one ruptured and did not drain. Surgery could not be as bad as the pain the resulting infection caused. I’m scheduled for the surgery next month.
I had an ovarian cyst at age 19 and agree with all the above posts. It was worse than childbirth (and my baby was over ten pounds!). I had severe pain that peaked when the cyst ruptured & I was in the fetal position sobbing.
The first OBGYN I saw wanted to remove the ovary with the cyst before it ruptured. The second OBGYN said that was drastic & unnecessary. She put me on the birth control pill, which helps prevent new cysts from forming and can shrink existing cysts. I was also given Vicodin until the intense pain resolved. Ibuprofen did not cut it.
My understanding from many years of dealing with this: cysts naturally form as an egg is about to release from the ovary, so there will often be many small cysts visible via ultrasound. When a cyst doesn’t break open and starts to swell, that’s when it becomes problematic. (If any doctors have different info or want to correct this understanding, please do.)
Mine was 5.5 cm and hurt like a mf. Twenty-five years later, I still get pain in the area where my cyst ruptured. I’ve had two surgeries to remove endometriosis and recently had a full hysterectomy (for other medical reasons) and I still get pain in that area. I’ve been told it’s probably nerve damage & physical therapy might help.
BOTTOM LINE: The birth control pill is frequently an early treatment for a large ovarian cyst and for women who tend to get frequent large cysts. Pain control should also be taken seriously.
I had one bust on Monday. While I was sitting on jury duty. That was a fun one to explain to the judge. Everyone in the court was basically on over-60 man and they had no idea what to do with me. The judge excused me with no problem though thank god.
I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy. Jelly is one tough lady to deal with that right after surgery!
I had an endometrioma / chocolate cyst that ruptured and they just had to do emergency surgery and take the whole dang ovary out… It basically exploded and there was nothing really left. Recovering from the 9″ incision was easier than the pain of it blowing up. Awful!