Comedian Kathy Griffin announced Monday that she has lung cancer and will undergo surgery to remove half of her lung, despite, as she notes, never having smoked.

What You Need To Know

  • Comedian Kathy Griffin announced Monday that she has lung cancer and will undergo surgery

  • Griffin said that her doctors “are very optimistic” about her prognosis, noting that it is stage one and limited to her left lung

  • Griffin lost two of her four siblings to cancer: Her brother Gary, who died in 2014, and her sister Joyce in 2017

“I've got to tell you guys something,” Griffin wrote in a note posted to social media. “I have cancer. I'm about to go into surgery to have half of my left lung removed.”

"Yes, I have lung cancer even though I've never smoked!” she added.

Griffin told ABC News in an exclusive interview that she was "definitely in shock" about her cancer diagnosis.

"I was definitely in shock," Griffin told ABC's Juju Chang. "I'm still a little bit in shock. Not denial, but ... once a day, I'll just turn to, like, nobody next to me and go, ‘Can you believe this s***? Is this a b**** or what?'"

Griffin said that her doctors “are very optimistic” about her prognosis, noting that it is stage one and limited to her left lung.

"It's stage 1," she told ABC News. "It's nowhere else in my body. So I need to focus on that."

“Hopefully no chemo or radiation after this and I should have normal function with my breathing,” Griffin wrote in her social media post. “I should be up and running as usual in a month or less.”

“It’s been a helluva 4 years,” Griffin wrote, apparently in reference to the backlash she faced after a photoshoot in which she held a fake severed head that resembled former President Donald Trump. “Trying to get back to work, making you guys laugh and entertaining you, but I'm gonna be just fine.”

“Please stay up to date on your medical check ups,” Griffin implored her fans. “It’ll save your life.”

She also urged people to get vaccinated against COVID-19, saying that her condition could have been much more serious were she not fully vaccinated: “Of course I am fully vaccinated for Covid. The consequences for being unvaccinated would have been even more serious.”

Griffin lost two of her four siblings to cancer: Her brother Gary, who died in 2014, and her sister Joyce in 2017. Griffin shaved her head in 2017 in honor of Joyce’s cancer battle months before she passed away.