When the actress was diagnosed with early-stage ovarian cancer in 2003, she kept the diagnosis as well as her treatment — surgery and nine months of chemotherapy — private.
Bates told People in 2018 that her agent at the time didn't want her to be the "poster child" for ovarian cancer.
"I didn't want anyone to know, but it really took a lot out of me," she said.
In 2012, she was diagnosed with breast cancer the actress decided it was time to go public with her health problems. She underwent a double mastectomy and told People she was lucky not to have to undergo radiation or treatment again.
Ater her treatment, she was diagnosed with lymphedema, which is when blocked lymph nodes cause painful or uncomfortable swelling.
"It's progressive and it's incurable and it keeps going," Bates said on "The Kelly Clarkson Show" in 2019, per Today. "You can get infections that put you in the hospital and it's congenital, there's about 50,000 of those people who are kids who've grown up with it."