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William Shatner is revealing the terrifying health scare that nearly went unnoticed.
The 95-year-old actor said a doctor initially dismissed a lump before a second opinion led to a shocking stage 4 malignant melanoma diagnosis.
“So I had a lump and the doctor, friendly doctor said, ‘Oh, it’s a salivary gland. Just massage it there,'” Shatner recalled on “CBS Mornings” this week.
WILLIAM SHATNER AND DAUGHTER MELANIE REVEAL THEY BATTLED STAGE 4 CANCER AT THE SAME TIME
A second opinion saved William Shatner’s life after his initial doctor dismissed a lump. (Santiago Felipe/Getty Images)
A concerned Shatner turned to a doctor friend for another opinion.
“And he put his hands here,” he said, touching his face, “and he said, ‘You better get this out,’ like that.”
That second opinion led to a life-saving diagnosis.
Shatner said an oncologist told him, “We got to take that out now.”
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Shatner said that a doctor friend urged him to be seen after another doctor dismissed his concerns. (Mat Hayward/Getty Images)
He continued to explain how the cancer had already grown inside his body.
“It had spread to my brain. There were little points of light in my brain and little points of light, I think, in my lung,” he said. “Stage four.”
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Shatner underwent surgery to remove the tumor and later completed two years of immunotherapy.
But while Shatner was battling his cancer, his daughter was fighting her own life-threatening diagnosis.
Melanie Shatner Gretsch discovered a lump in her breast nearly a year before her father’s diagnosis. Although a mammogram months earlier had not detected anything concerning, she trusted her instincts and pushed for another check.
Shatner and his daughter, Melanie Shatner Gretsch, battled cancer at the same time. (Barry King/WireImage)
Gretsch was later diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer that had spread to the lymph nodes in her chest.
At first, she thought she was in the clear.
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“Something just said, ‘you need to check again,’” she said in the joint interview with her beloved father.
But the cancer was far more aggressive than she realized.
The “Star Trek” legend has stayed busy following his health scare, with new books, a podcast and music projects on the horizon. (Michael Becker/ FOX)
“And I [would have] died because it was a super aggressive kind of cancer, breast cancer, and it had already escaped the breast wall and had gone into my chest,” Gretsch said.
Her treatment was intense — months of chemotherapy, 30 rounds of radiation, a double mastectomy and a year of immunotherapy.
During her health battle, Gretsch said there was one moment when she needed her father more than ever.
“I was just in one of those moments where you want your daddy, you know, like you’re little. You’re feeling very little, and you’re feeling, ‘this is really scary.’ And I called him,” she said.
By the end of 2024, both Shatner and Gretsch were declared cancer-free.
Gretsch said telling her father the news was an emotional milestone.
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“It was the third time in my life I had heard him cry,” she admitted.
The actor, who became the oldest man to travel to space aboard a Blue Origin rocket, has continued working despite his health scare, with new books, a podcast and music projects on the way.
