Actress and writer Jeannie Gaffigan, wife of comedian Jim Gaffigan, is recovering after emergency surgery to remove a tumor from her brain stem.
The surgery, announced Tuesday morning on her husband’s Facebook feed, took nine hours.
The 47-year-old tweeted thanks to the staff of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York on Wednesday for “literally saving my life.”
The large tumor was wrapped around Gaffigan’s brain stem, according to her husband’s Facebook post, which said the growth was discovered two weeks earlier by an MRI scan. The tumor was completely removed during the operation, the post says.
An estimated 16,700 people will die from brain and spinal cord tumors this year, according to the American Cancer Society.
The post, in which Jim Gaffigan thanked his followers for their prayers, had more than 6,000 messages of support by Wednesday afternoon.
Jeannie Gaffigan posted an image on social media after the surgery Monday. It showed her in bed, hooked up to an IV, and kissing one of the couple’s five children.
“I’m coming back!” she captioned the image. “Thanks for your prayers. I’m alive!”
Gaffigan and her husband are best known as writers and co-creators of “The Jim Gaffigan Show,” a comedy based loosely on the couple and their family life, in which Jim stars.