William Shatner cancer battle revealed alongside daughter Melanie’s diagnosis
William Shatner and daughter Melanie Shatner Gretsch told CBS News they fought advanced cancers at the same time and are now cancer-free.
By Deshawn Carter · Sports Writer
3 min read
William Shatner cancer details are now public after the “Star Trek” actor and his daughter, Melanie Shatner Gretsch, told CBS News they were treated for advanced cancers during the same frightening stretch and are now cancer-free.
Shatner said his health scare began about three years ago with a lump that a doctor first identified as a salivary gland. After the lump grew over the next month, he asked a doctor friend to look at it, and was told it should come out. An oncologist later agreed, according to CBS News.
The diagnosis, Shatner said, was stage 4 malignant melanoma. He told CBS News the cancer had reached his brain, describing “little points of light” there, and said he believed there were also spots in his lung.
What cancer did William Shatner have?
Shatner told CBS News he was diagnosed with stage 4 malignant melanoma, an advanced form of skin cancer. Stage 4 generally means cancer has spread from where it began to other parts of the body.
The actor, identified by CBS News as 95, said he did not share the diagnosis publicly at the time because he worried it could hurt his ability to get work. He said he loves what he does.
Melanie Shatner Gretsch says she pushed for another look
Nearly a year before her father’s diagnosis, Shatner Gretsch found a lump in her breast, CBS News reported. She said an ultrasound did not initially raise concern with her doctor, but she felt something was wrong and pushed for another check.
“Something just said, ‘You need to check again,’” she recalled to CBS News.
Both father and daughter said she may not have survived if she had accepted the first result. Shatner Gretsch said her breast cancer was highly aggressive and had already moved beyond the breast wall into her chest.
Her treatment was grueling, according to CBS News: months of chemotherapy, 30 radiation treatments, a double mastectomy and a year of immunotherapy.
During that period, she said, she leaned on her father. Shatner Gretsch remembered calling him one night when she felt frightened and childlike, needing comfort from her dad.
She described Shatner as a calming presence. According to her account, he got out of bed, drove to her and gave her a “bear hug,” telling her the illness was a “blip” she would get through.
How are William Shatner and Melanie Shatner Gretsch doing now?
Both Shatner and Shatner Gretsch are now cancer-free, CBS News reported. Shatner Gretsch said one of the most emotional moments came when she received an early clear PET scan and called her father with the news.
She told him it was only the third time in her life that she had heard him cry.
Shatner said the experience cut against a parent’s instinct to protect a child, because this was something he could not control. He told CBS News he eventually understood she was going to be all right.
The father and daughter are now speaking about the ordeal on a podcast called “No Time But Now,” which CBS News said premieres Wednesday and focuses on medicine, science and spirituality.
Shatner told CBS News he believed throughout the experience that they would survive.
This story draws on original reporting from CBS News.