Dolph Lundgren revealed in an interview with journalist Graham Bensinger that he has been battling cancer for about eight years. The 65-year-old actor confessed that in 2015, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer.
“This is the first time I am talking about this. If I can save someone’s life in my situation, then it’s worth it,” said Dolph Lundgren. In 2015, doctors in Los Angeles found a tumor in one of the kidneys. He was treated, had regular check-ups and for five years was fine. Until 2020, when, on a visit to his native Sweden, he discovered other tumors.
“In 2020 I was back in Sweden and I had acid reflux, so I had an MRI and they found a few more tumors in that area,” Dolph said. He underwent surgery and had six tumors removed. “I had a film I was going to star in and that I was directing. The doctor called me when I was in Alabama, ready to start filming: ‘They found another tumor in your liver’. At that moment I realized it was something serious. They did an ultrasound to prepare me for surgery, but the surgeon called me and said, ‘It’s grown. It is TOO BIG. We can’t get it out. It’s the size of a small lemon,'” the actor continued his confession. He began to take a treatment that generated side effects such as diarrhea or sudden weight loss, with which he struggled a lot. He had the support of his younger fiancee, Emma Krokdal.
After six months of the doctor not contacting him and telling him he should take time off work and spend more time with his loved ones, Lundgren asked him how long he thought he had to live. “He told me two or three years, but I could tell from his voice that he probably thought less than that. I thought that was it. I was looking back and thinking that I had a great life, that I lived like five lifetimes. I wasn’t bitter about it, I was only sad for my children, my fiancee and the other people around me, because I’m a relatively young and active man.”
He sought a second opinion, and the doctor was able to treat his kidney cancer by targeting a mutation that was common in lung cancer. “If I had gone with the other treatment, I would have had three to four months to live. I couldn’t believe that such a difference could be made in three months, the tumors were shrinking by 20-30%. In 2022 I waited to see how these drugs work and finally they have shrunk by 90%. They are now in the process of removing the scar tissue from these tumors. I hope that then there will be no more cancer activity and that the medication will take care of everything,” Lundgren added.
Source translation and adaptation: filmnow.ro