Thanks to Laura F for the transcription.

Again, this article is from a Gossip Magazine, Globe, and this post is just to let you know. This may or may not be true, since these mags bend the truth sometimes, or skip the truth entirely, lol. Just a reminder, enjoy.

Globe

Dark Angel Star's Brave Battle To Save Her Beauty

DARK ANGEL's Valarie Rae Miller has some tough challenges in her hot, new TV show, but none as terrifying as the one she faced in real life.

Just a few years ago, a golf ball-sized tumor on her face threatened to destroy the actress's delicate features, pals say. For months, the left side of her face was paralyzed and she couldn't even close her eye.

It happened in the mid-'90s, when Valarie was hosting a game show in Los Angeles.

"I was looking over some publicity shots of myself and noticed a lump on my face," she told a friend. "I have allergy problems and thought they were causing some kind of skin break out. It didn't seem serious, but I decided to see a doctor anyway.

"My doctor said it could be a tumor. Then a specialist confirmed it - I had a tumor on my saliva gland. The doctors didn't make a big deal about it, but the word 'tumor' strikes terror in you."

Valarie was told she'd need just a few weeks to recover from the operation to remove the lump. But the prognosis changed once she was on the operating table and surgeons discovered the growth was the size of a golf ball and the nerve endings on the left side of her face had wrapped themselves around it.

"They had to peel the endings off the tumor, and in doing that caused extensive nerve damage," Valarie explained to a pal.

Afterward, doctors told the actress that the left side of her face would be temporarily paralyzed but she'd make a full recovery.

"But healing didn't go as planned and they grew worried she'd be PERMANENTLY paralyzed," a pal says Valarie told her. The actress says she couldn't even blink. "I had to tape down my left eye to shut it. The left side of my mouth didn't move. It took six months of intensive therapy to get any type of normal movements again in my face."

Now, with her tumor ordeal behind her, Valarie's career is soaring. She stars on FOX TV's Dark Angel as Original Cindy and she also hosts a weekend morning show.

"Valarie really appreciates her success," a pal says. "She knows that a paralyzed face would probably have ruined her career. So she's very thankful that things turned out OK."

-Diana Siegfried