“I don’t give up easily,” anchor Kathi Goertzen, who has been battling a benign brain tumor for the past 11 years, told KOMO viewers on Tuesday.
Goertzen has been with the Seattle ABC-affiliate for the past 30 years and has worked through multiple operations to eradicate the tumor. It continues to rebound, though, and its latest victim has been Goertzen’s facial nerves.
“It’s hard to be on TV looking like this,” Goertzen said about her now-sagging facial features.
Goertzen is currently working off-camera for KOMO as she copes with the nerve damage that has limited her facial expressions and her ability to speak.
“I miss my anchor chair more than anyone knows,” she wrote in a recent blog post on KOMO’s website. “I would really like to be back to ‘normal.'”
Goertzen is undergoing another operation today to remove parts of the tumor that are growing again.
Here’s a video of Goertzen returning to the anchor desk in 2009 after undergoing her fourth surgery to remove parts of the tumor: