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The iconic actress was given a prognosis of three months to live by doctors.
Valerie Harper, the iconic actress who played Rhoda Morgenstern on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and may have as little as three months to live, according to People magazine.
Harper, 73, who also starred in the spin-off "Rhoda," told the magazine she has leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare condition that occurs when cancer cells spread into the fluid-filled membrane surrounding the brain.
Harper says she got the diagnosis after feeling numbness in her jaw during rehearsals for her one-woman show Looped on Jan. 11.
"(I) was rehearsing away, and then it was as if I had Novocaine," she told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Jan. 21.
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"I thought, what the heck is happening to me?" she recalled. "(I) went to the hospital, and they couldn't find much of anything."
Further testing confirmed she had the incurable disease.
"I was stunned," she told People. "And in the next minute I thought, 'This could draw more attention to cancer research.'"
She now hopes her story will spread awareness and raise money.
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"This is a really complicated condition," her neuro-oncologist, Dr. Jeremy Rudnick, told People. "The spinal fluid is a collection of fluid tha's being circulated (through the brain) kind of like a sink. The fluid itself is growing cancer cells, so they are multiplying in there. Those cells start to coat the brain."
Harper is now undergoing chemotherapy, but her doctor said she may have only a few months left.
Her "Mary Tyler Moore" co-star Ed Asner said he refuses to accept that prognosis.
"I have come to know her much better in my latter years and have every confidence in the world that she will shock the hell out of us and survive to keep functioning as the great talent and human that she is," he said in a statement to the Daily News.
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He referred to Harper as a "century plan," meaning someone special who's meant to live 100 years.
"Valerie is someone that I've learned a great deal from. Not just comedically but also in her ability to put whomever approached her, or worked with her, completely at ease with a laugh and an energy that's intoxicating," actor Jason Bateman, who starred with her in the 1986 NBC sitcom "Valerie," told Entertainment Tonight.
"My thoughts and love go out to her and her family," he said.
Harper, who battled lung cancer in 2009 and wrote about it in her recent memoir, said she's resolved to make the most of her final days.
"I don't think of dying," she told People. "I think of being here now."
ndillon@nydailynews.com
