Dolph Lundgren's secret 8-year cancer battle
Swedish actor, filmmaker and martial artist Dolph Lundgren discloses that he’s been working with medical professionals to treat cancerous tumors since 2015 and at one point, he was told he had two to three years left to live. Thankfully, Dolph sought a second opinion and was put on a treatment that quickly shrank his numerous tumors, by as much as 90% last year.
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00:00 And there is the day after my surgery.
00:03 They took out that one tumor, it's about that big.
00:06 Then they took another, the other two they found,
00:09 and another three small ones they found.
00:11 So six altogether.
00:13 So hopefully it's cleaned out.
00:15 If it dies, it dies.
00:17 It will die.
00:18 - I know it's been a tough few years.
00:21 You have not talked about it yet,
00:24 and I'm really grateful for the opportunity
00:27 that you're willing to take us through some of this today.
00:32 - They found a tumor, or they didn't know what it was,
00:36 just a tumor in my kidney,
00:37 and they took it out here in LA in 2015.
00:41 But then they did a biopsy and it was cancerous.
00:44 And then I did scans every six months,
00:48 then you do it every year,
00:49 and it was fine for five years.
00:52 In 2020, I was back in Sweden,
00:55 and I had some kind of acid reflux.
00:59 I didn't know what it was, so I did,
01:01 with an MRI, I did one.
01:03 And they found that there were a few more tumors
01:08 around that area.
01:10 - So you have the surgery, you wake up,
01:13 you're told they actually removed six tumors.
01:16 - Yeah.
01:17 - And what happens from there?
01:20 - There's a picture that I was gonna direct,
01:22 and star in, that was starting in the fall.
01:25 The doctor called me when I was in Alabama,
01:27 ready to shoot, and he said,
01:29 "They found one more tumor in the liver."
01:32 So I was like, "Oh, (beep) okay."
01:34 At that point, it started to hit me
01:36 that this is kind of something serious.
01:38 They did a scan to, you know, prepare for surgery.
01:43 And the surgeon called me and said,
01:47 "No, it's grown now, it's too big.
01:50 "We can't take it out."
01:51 It's like the size of a, like a small lemon.
01:54 So now, if they can't take it out,
01:56 that means you have to do systemic therapy.
01:59 But then I started getting these side effects
02:02 where I got diarrhea and I lost a lot of weight.
02:07 And that wasn't very nice for myself
02:10 or for, you know, my poor fiancee,
02:13 to suffer through that.
02:15 - His mouth got really sore.
02:18 His hands got sore feet.
02:20 And he couldn't eat anything warm,
02:23 anything cold, anything like spicy.
02:26 So that was a struggle to get food down.
02:29 So he kept losing weight.
02:30 - The problem was the doctor over there
02:33 wasn't really sharing information with us.
02:35 So we didn't really know.
02:36 Didn't know what was going on.
02:37 - And these are the doctors at Cedars?
02:39 - These are the doctors at Cedars, yeah.
02:41 I had signed an expendables for an Aquaman,
02:46 a sequel to Aquaman,
02:48 and both pics were shooting in London.
02:50 In the fall of 2021.
02:53 When I got to London,
02:55 they had a really good guy there
02:57 who kind of was putting in charge of my care.
03:00 And I didn't hear from the people at Cedars for six months.
03:05 They had never called me or anything.
03:07 I think now, thinking back,
03:09 they probably thought, "Oh, I'm a lost case."
03:12 Which I'd realized that with a guy in London.
03:15 - We realized it was a lot worse than we thought.
03:17 He kind of started talking about
03:19 all these different tumors.
03:20 Like in the lung, in the stomach,
03:22 in the spine, outside the kidneys.
03:25 - Do you remember specifically what he said?
03:27 - He started saying things like,
03:28 "You should probably take a break
03:32 "and spend more time with your family," and so forth.
03:36 So I kind of asked him,
03:37 "How long do you think I've got left?"
03:38 And he said, "I think he said two or three years."
03:43 But I could tell in his voice
03:45 that he probably thought it was less.
03:48 - Did you think it was it?
03:49 - I thought it was it for sure, yeah.
03:52 So, yeah.
03:56 Yeah, it's, you know.
04:04 I mean, you kind of look at your life and going,
04:09 "Have I had a great life?"
04:10 Yeah, I've had a freaking great life.
04:12 I've led like five lifetimes in one already.
04:16 With everything I've done and, you know.
04:18 And so it wasn't like I was bitter about it.
04:21 It was just like, you know,
04:25 feel sorry for my kids and my fiance
04:29 and people around you, you know what I mean?
04:30 'Cause still a fairly young guy
04:33 and fairly, you know, active and so forth.
04:36 - It obviously hit me when I had a deep conversation
04:38 with my dad about what would happen
04:40 if he, you know, passed away and stuff.
04:42 That was a horrible conversation.
04:43 It's 'cause I was like, yeah,
04:46 I'm at a tough time, yeah.
04:51 - I'm gonna grab it.
04:56 - Sorry.
05:09 - Oh, it's fine.
05:11 - I think it's just sometimes I keep so much in
05:16 and I try to be like tough a lot, yeah.
05:21 I don't think I've even spoken that much about it.
05:27 Like what would have happened and stuff like that.
05:30 Because also I have to be strong for my sister.
05:33 - And that's a heavy burden to carry.
05:37 - I mean, I've always known that family
05:39 is the most important thing, to be honest.
05:41 You need to understand that life can change in a second
05:43 and you need to be on board and you need to be strong.
05:46 - So I, in the midst of my, you know,
05:50 shooting these two movies and being kind of depressed,
05:52 I decided, well, screw it.
05:55 I might as well get a second opinion.
05:56 So we get there and I see this doctor.
05:59 I meet this doctor, Drakaki.
06:01 - This legend walks in and he's so sick looking
06:06 and completely absent from the whole visit.
06:08 He's just looking the floor.
06:11 And he was told that he has a few months to live.
06:13 That's how we get challenged to see,
06:16 can we find a different avenue to care for these patients?
06:20 And so then I had my colleagues to offer another biopsy
06:24 and talk to pathology and ask them to reevaluate the tumor.
06:28 He was lucky because we did find a mutation
06:30 that is actually common in lung cancer.
06:32 And I was able to get off-label use
06:35 for his kidney cancer, treating as if it was lung.
06:39 - She was like, this is really good news.
06:41 There's so many medications that targets this mutation.
06:45 We're gonna start with this one
06:46 that seems to be the most effective.
06:48 I remember we were driving home
06:50 and it was like, we couldn't speak.
06:51 Like, both of us were like, you know, it's like a movie.
06:56 - If I'd gone on the other treatment,
06:59 I had about three to four months left.
07:01 I couldn't believe that it would be
07:03 that radical of a difference,
07:05 that within three months,
07:07 it was, you know, things were shrinking by 20, 30%.
07:12 - How well do you recall sharing with your family
07:15 when you had the positive news?
07:17 - Yeah, I remember sharing it with them.
07:21 Yeah, it was emotional because, you know,
07:26 even, I remember telling even my good,
07:31 some of my good friends.
07:33 Nobody wants to think the worst,
07:34 but I think they did think, you know, that it was over.
07:39 - What's happened since then?
07:41 - So 2022 was basically watching these medications
07:45 do their thing, and finally things had shrunk into about 90%.
07:50 Now I'm in the process of taking out
07:52 the remaining scar tissue of these tumors.
07:55 - I used to say, his cancer is melting away.
07:58 There are certain parts of his body
07:59 that the cancer is responding really well.
08:01 There's some lesions that we cannot see them anymore.
08:04 So that is above expectations.
08:07 - What's the prognosis now?
08:09 - The prognosis is that hopefully when they take these out,
08:13 there's no cancer activity,
08:15 and the medication that I'm taking
08:18 is gonna suppress everything else.
08:21 - I hope it's years.
08:23 I don't think it's months.
08:25 My hope and goal is to try to keep them
08:28 on these medications as long as possible.
08:30 And then as the future and the science is changing,
08:33 just keep getting biopsies as things change within his body
08:36 to try to identify newer targets for treatment.
08:40 - Going through all of this has impacted you now, how?
08:45 - Well, I think, you know, you appreciate life a lot more.
08:52 You appreciate every day.
08:53 Every day I can be with people I love.
08:56 And, you know,
08:57 you just appreciate, you know,
09:02 having a, being lucky enough to be alive
09:12 and appreciate every moment there is.
09:16 This is just the first time I've spoken about it.
09:19 So if it can save one person's life
09:22 who was in my situation, then it's worth it for sure.
09:25 - As you're thinking about this,
09:26 what makes you emotional?
09:28 - That I found these wonderful people that could help me,
09:34 you know, and that I think maybe all the work I did.
09:39 Somehow as an actor, you know,
09:41 you try to put positive emotion
09:44 and positive energy into the world, you know.
09:48 And I've always tried to be nice to everybody I meet,
09:51 all the fans, anybody.
09:52 And I maybe it came back to me somehow,
09:56 and I wanted to need it, you know, the most.
09:58 I think when you put love out there, you get it back,
10:00 you know.
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