General Hospital star Kirsten Storms wants to clear the air about her reasons for stepping away from the daytime soap.
Storms will undergo surgery for an aneurysm in the coming weeks, she revealed in a lengthy Instagram post on Tuesday. The star writes that her neurosurgeon first discovered the aneurysm during a follow-up scan in January for a cyst she had removed from her brain in 2021.
“The January scan happened because I had symptoms that the doctors thought could’ve been brain related,” she wrote. “Ok — when I say that I was shocked when the doctors told me they found an aneurysm on the right side of my brain… welp, I basically launched into a standup comedy routine.”
That same weekend, Storms said she had a procedure done where the doctor threaded a camera from her leg up to her brain.
“(It’s a routine procedure, but the path inside your body that they lead the camera through is *insane*… THE CAMERA GOES THROUGH YOUR ARMPIT, guys. Your. Armpit.) Anyway, because of the *slightly* complex situation with the aneurysm (nothing bad, just not typical), it wasn’t coiled that weekend,” she explained.
The coiling procedure — which involves tiny coils placed inside the aneurysm to block blood flow into it, thus preventing it from rupturing — is only just now being scheduled for sometime “in the next 2 weeks,” she said.
In July, Storms announced that she was temporarily stepping back from her long-running role as Maxie on the daytime series to move from L.A. to Nashville with her daughter Harper. But her new social media post stated her health concerns as another contributing factor in the decision.
“Aneurysms (obviously) can be caused by stress. Brain cysts? I believe that is possible too,” she wrote. “And since the January scan showed a new, but very small, squatter (aka cyst) on my brain stem — it was clear I needed to change some things in my life asap. For my own personal reasons, no longer living in Los Angeles was very important to me. The biggest reason for the move was Harper, but a lot of it was for my physical and mental health. And my overall happiness.”
Disney/Christine Bartolucci
In the caption for the Instagram post, Storms explained why she felt the need to come forward about the procedure now. “I wanted to post this because even though my brain seems to be sorta lowkey rebelling against me, it does allow me to understand that we’ve all got times when things aren’t great,” she said. “If we can, we will do our best to do what is best for ourselves and loved ones. Since I knew what an aneurysm was, the scan in January majorly freaked me out.”
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She continued, “A few days after I was discharged from the hospital, someone created a blog post that said I was in the hospital that weekend because I tried to ‘unalive’ myself. I couldn’t understand why a person would make up something that terrible, when they had no idea why I was really there. There are a few really bad apples out there.”
But Storms ended things on a happy note, tagging her longtime friend and fellow GH alum, Emme Rylan, with whom she’s teamed on a sweater-making collaboration.
“There are people in my life who I am truly thankful to know. One of those individuals just made a s— load of sweaters with me. They are glorious,” she concluded.
