Blythe Danner secretly fought the same cancer that killed her late husband.
Blythe Danner secretly fought the same cancer that killed her late husband
The actress, 79, told People magazine she feels “fine and dandy” after beating adenoid cystic carcinoma, which claimed the life of Bruce Paltrow, 58, in 2002.
Blythe said: “Everyone is touched by cancer in some way, but it’s unusual for a couple to have the same cancer... I started feeling very woozy and I was forgetting everything.
“And then I felt a lump in my neck, right next to where Bruce had found his... it’s a sneaky disease. But I’m fine and dandy now. And I’m lucky to be alive.”
Blythe added when she got her diagnosis in March 2018 she “looked up at heaven and said to Bruce, ‘Are you lonely up there?’”
The ‘Meet the Parents’, actress, who had actress daughter Gwyneth Paltrow, 50, and Jake Paltrow, 47, with late director Bruce, said she initially kept her children in the dark about her illness to avoid worrying them before she revealed she was sick.
Blythe underwent three surgeries and alternative treatments before she was declared free of cancer in 2020.
She added she never had “any fear of death at all” because she had already lost the love of her life.
Blythe said: “I wasn’t quaking in my boots. You never get over that kind of loss. Bruce was the heart of our family.
“And life is so much paler without him around. But grief is the price we pay for love.”
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