Johnny Ruffo reveals how his girlfriend saved his life: “I was hours from death”
Johnny Ruffo has revealed how his girlfriend's quick thinking saved his life hours before emergency surgery to remove a brain tumour last August.
Twelve months after being diagnosed with a brain tumour, the Home and Away star has opened about his battle with cancer in a new interview with Who magazine's Who Are You podcast with Pete Timb.
"I was just at home and I had a headache, but everyone has headaches and you never think much of it," Ruffo said, adding that he had suffered from migraine-like headaches off-and-on over the years, but he never had them checked out.
But as his symptoms got worse, his girlfriend of three years, Tahnee Sims, forced Ruffo to go to the hospital.
"It had been ongoing and it just got worse and worse. It got to about 4 or 5 in the afternoon and I couldn't speak, I couldn't communicate with her [Tahnee] at all."
Doctors initially believed Ruffo to be suffering a migraine, but he was kept overnight for testing. Then, the next morning, Sims received a call from doctors who said Ruffo had fallen into a coma, had a brain tumour and needed emergency surgery to remove it. He was admitted into the hospital August 6 and woke up two days later.
"Next thing I know I wake up on Tuesday and they say, 'You've had a brain tumour removed,'" the actor recalled. "When I finally came to I was like, 'Holy shit this is serious.'"
Doctors told Ruffo that had he not gone into the hospital when he did, it's very likely he would have died in his sleep at home.
"I would have gone into a coma that night and Tahnee would have tried to wake up me the next morning and I just would have been out," he said.