“The Expendables” star Dolph Lundgren didn’t beat around the bush when he said he’s “lucky to be alive” after revealing how he almost died during his secret 8-year battle with cancer.
During the 65-year-old Swedish actor’s appearance on “In Depth with Graham Bensinger,” he opened up about the “serious” health diagnosis he got in 2015 when doctors in Los Angeles “found a tumor” in his kidney and took it out, the New York Post reported.
“But then they did a biopsy — and it was cancerous,” Lundgren told the host. “Then I did scans every six months, then you do it every year, then it was fine for five years.”
Dolph Lundgren reveals ‘serious’ 8-year cancer battle https://t.co/0J3SVGnouQ pic.twitter.com/Hbl6Je6tZy
— New York Post (@nypost) May 10, 2023
In 2020, he was experiencing what he thought was acid reflux, but it turned out that the cancer was back and had spread. Lundgren was told he had six tumors in his kidneys and liver and that he only had “two to three years” left to live.
“At that point, it started to hit me that this is kind of something serious,” the “Rocky IV” actor said.
After a scan to prepare for surgery, Dolph said “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 like a small lemon.”
“The doctor over there [Sweden] wasn’t really sharing information with us, so we didn’t really know, didn’t know what was going on,” the actor said. “I think now, thinking back, they probably thought, ‘Oh, I’m a lost case.’”
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“I thought it was it for sure,” he added, before getting emotional. “You kind of look at your life and go ‘I’ve had a frickin’ great life.’ I’ve lived like five lifetimes in one. So it wasn’t like I was bitter about it. It was just like, you know, feel sorry for my kids and my fiancée and people around you.”
However, not ready to give up all hope, he decided to seek a second opinion. The second opinion would come from Dr. Alexandra Drakaki, who noticed something unusual about the tumor and prescribed medication that had success with shrinking mutations in tumors, which is exactly what happened. Lundgren said the tumor had shrunk by 90% by the end of 2022.
“I used to say his cancer is melting away,” Drakaki laughed. “There are certain parts of his body that the cancer is responding really well. There’s some lesions that we cannot see them anymore. So that is above expectations.”
And now the Hollywood star said he “appreciates life a lot more” and feels “lucky to be alive,” Page Six noted.
Lundgren is engaged to fiancée Emma Krokdal, 25. He also shares two children from a previous marriage.