“Good Morning America” correspondent and son of the late Christopher Reeve, Will Reeve is facing his own health battle.
The 34-year-old announced Tuesday morning that he had been diagnosed with testicular cancer.
“I was raised to share one’s struggles if in doing so it might help others,” Reeve told PEOPLE of her decision to open up about the diagnosis.
Reeve was diagnosed with testicular cancer last spring, which then spread to his lymph nodes and abdomen.
He first discovered a lump on one of his testicles in the shower, which later turned out to be cancerous. Reeve underwent an orchiectomy in May to remove the testicle.
What he hoped would be “a momentary incident in an otherwise great time in my life” unfortunately led to the discovery that his type of testicular cancer was the more aggressive embryonal carcinoma. He had to undergo an additional six-hour surgery to remove dozens of lymph nodes in his abdomen. Three of the nodes tested positive for testicular cancer, requiring Reeve to undergo two rounds of chemotherapy.
“Every doctor I saw along the way used what I call the good C-word: ‘cure,’” he told PEOPLE. At an examination on September 8, Reeve was cancer free.
Reeve was just two years old when his father, “Superman” star Christopher Reeve, was thrown from a horse and paralyzed from the neck down. The actor died in 2004 after becoming an advocate for spinal cord injury research alongside his wife, Dana Reeve. Dana died in 2006 at the age of 44 from lung cancer.
“Watching my parents up close take the adversity they faced in their lives and turn it into something hopeful has had a major impact on my life and how I try to live it,” Reeve tells PEOPLE.
He added later in the interview: “The irony was not lost on me: 20 years after my mother died of lung cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering, there I was in the same building being treated for cancer. I was living the lives of each of my parents at the same time. Because I had cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering, I had first-hand experience of what my mother went through. Simultaneously, I was learning more about what it was like to be my father in the last nine years of his life, where my mother and our family took care of him And I was there with my wife who, from the day I met her, reminded me in many ways of my mother, now playing the role of wife and caregiver.
Reeve married his wife, Amanda Dubin, in January of this year, just months before his diagnosis.
“We talk about ‘in sickness and in health,’” he told PEOPLE. “We had a first test of our vows, just a few months.”
Dubin added: “The positive side was that we had confirmation early on in the marriage that we were well equipped to handle anything.”
The couple are planning to start a family and opted for a sperm bank because, as Reeve explains, “even though an orchiectomy doesn’t prevent natural conception, you never know, so you want to be safe.”
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