Kirsten Storms gave “General Hospital” fans an update on her health on Monday night, revealing that she will undergo surgery to be coiled “within the next two weeks” to address a brain aneurysm that doctors discovered during a scan in January.
The longtime soap actress, who starred on General Hospital for 20 years, wrote in a statement on social media that she was “extremely surprised” by the discovery. She added, “I wanted to post this because even though my brain seems a little subdued and rebellious, I can understand that we all have times when things don’t go our way. If we can, we’re all going to do what’s best for ourselves and our loved ones.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, the coiling procedure involves “feeding a soft, flexible wire through a catheter into the aneurysm. The wire coils within the aneurysm, sealing it from the artery.” Surgery is performed prophylactically to prevent the aneurysm from rupturing.
Storms also addressed a false online rumor that Storms was hospitalized in January for trying to “reanimate” himself when he was actually meeting with a neurosurgeon for a brain scan to monitor a cyst. “I never understood why people would make up such awful things when they don’t understand why I’m actually there,” she wrote. “There are some really bad apples.”
Storms took a break from General Hospital in July to move from Los Angeles to Tennessee, and Maxie was briefly played by Nicole Padge.
“Ever since a scan in January revealed a new, but *very small*, squat (aka cyst) in my brainstem, it was clear that I needed to change some things in my life ASAP,” Storms wrote in her latest post. “For my own personal reasons, it was very important to me that I no longer live in Los Angeles. The biggest reason for the move was for[my daughter]Harper, but a lot of it was for my physical and mental health.”
Storms previously underwent craniotomy in 2021 to remove a non-cancerous cyst from her brain.
Storms has since returned to “General Hospital” in pre-taped scenes, but she is still on leave from the long-running series. In a previous social post, the actress hinted that she would be “back in December, maybe November.” She first joined the soap in May 2005.