General Hospital’s Kristen Alderson Opens Up To Maurice Benard About Her Brother Eddie’s Cancer Journey
Kristen Alderson became a soap opera fan favorite when she played Star Manning on the ABC sudser, “One Life to Live.” When the show was canceled, her character along with a few others were brought over to “General Hospital” for a time, until a lawsuit prevented the show from using them. So Alderson was recast as Kiki Jerome, the daughter of mafioso Ava Jerome (Maura West). Kiki got embroiled in soapy drama with brothers Michael and Morgan Corinthos (Chad Duell and Bryan Craig), until 2015 when she had to leave the show to help her brother Eddie Alderson, who was battling cancer. Eddie had played Matthew Buchanan on “OLTL,” and the siblings were very close in real life.
Alderson had previously dated “GH” co-star Chad Duell, but the couple eventually went their separate ways. Since her time on soaps, she’s gone on to create a wildly successful gaming channel on Twitch. Alderson even had Duell on her show and while they played the game “Dead by Daylight” together, they talked about various shows they were on, and they fielded admiring fan comments.
Recently, the actress took time to discuss her career, as well as go into great detail about her brother’s cancer situation.
Alderson helped her brother remain positive
On the YouTube show, “State of Mind,” host Maurice Benard asked Kristen Alderson about her brother Eddie. “He’s my only sibling and he’s three years younger than me,” she said, adding, “And we just never fought growing up. The second they brought him home from the hospital, I held him in my arms and I said, ‘He’s my baby.’ And I didn’t want anyone else to hold him. I didn’t want anyone else to change his diapers. Like, I was just obsessed with him.” Benard asked about when Eddie got his cancer diagnosis, and Alderson explained he had several symptoms that went unnoticed because they didn’t seem out of the ordinary.
When his heart started racing while he was relaxing, his mother made a doctor’s appointment. The doctors found a large mass on his chest, eventually determining it was Hodgkin’s Lymphoma stage 4. “And then,” she went on, “He had six months of chemo. Every two weeks he had three hours of chemotherapy. But he didn’t lose his hair, he was still feeling good, it was great. [After] six months … didn’t work.”
Alderson and her brother opted to enjoy their lives and remain positive. “We really tried to lean into the positive. What saved him is Keytrudo, which is a drug that’s for lung cancer. It’s not even a chemotherapy. It’s kind of a last ditch effort to save him. And it did, and now he’s been cancer free for five years,” she explained.
