Rocky star Dolph Lundgren has revealed he has cancer as he opens up on realising it was ‘something serious’.
Lundgren, 65, said he has been secretly facing cancer for the past eight years, having decided not to speak openly about his journey until now.
The Swedish actor, who is known for roles in Rocky IV and Creed II, said it began when doctors found a tumour in his kidney in 2015.
Thankfully, they were able to remove it, and for the first five years ‘things were fine’.
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However, in 2020, he started experiencing acid reflux, and went for an MRI – which revealed there were ‘a few more tumours’ in his abdominal area.
Speaking on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, Lundgren explained how he underwent surgery to remove six tumours, but then got a call from the doctor to say they’d found another in the liver.
“At that point, it started to hit me that this is kind of something serious,” he said.
Lundgren continued: "They did a scan to prepare for surgery, and the surgeon called me and said, ‘No, it’s grown now. It’s too big. We can’t take it out. It’s like the size of a small lemon.’
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“So if they can’t take it out, that means you have to do systemic therapy.
"But then I started getting these side effects where I got diarrhea, and I lost a lot of weight."
Lundgren had just signed on to do Expendables 4 and the sequel to Aquaman, with both shoots due to take place in London in autumn 2021.
“They had a really good guy there who was put in charge of my care,” he said.
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A doctor ended up telling him to take a break and spend more time with his family, at which point Lundgren started to read between the lines.
“So I kind of asked him, ‘How long do you think I have left,’ and I think he said two to three years, but I could tell in his voice that he probably thought it was less,” he recalled.
“I thought it was it for sure.”
Lundgren said he didn’t feel ‘bitter’ about the potential of dying, adding: “You kind look at your life and go, ‘I’ve had a freaking great life’. I’ve led like five lifetimes in one already.”
While filming the two films, he decided to seek a second opinion from Dr Alexandra Drakakai, who found a mutation in one of the growths that is common among lung cancer sufferers.
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This allowed specialists to try other treatments, and within three months, ‘things were shrinking by 20 to 30 percent’.
As for how things are looking now, Lundgren said: “Hopefully, when they take these out, there’s no cancer activity and the medication that I’m taking is going to suppress everything else.”
Topics: Celebrity, TV and Film, Health
Jess Hardiman