Val Kilmer Addresses Cancer Diagnosis on Reddit AMA
Val Kilmer recently took to social media to announce a Reddit AMA session so that fans across the world could ask him questions.
During the session, Kilmer was asked, again, about cancer and his answer was different than the times it was brought up before.
“A while ago, Michael Douglas claimed you had terminal cancer. What was the story behind that?”
‘He was probably trying to help me cause press probably asked where I was these days, and I did have a healing of cancer, but my tongue is still swollen altho healing all the time because I don’t sound my normal self yet people think I may still be under the weather.‘
Without giving details into his diagnosis, he did admit to having the disease after years of speculation of him being ill. He spoke with a swollen tongue, wore scarves around his neck, and was seen in and out of hospitals.
At one point, he denied that he had cancer after Michael Douglas told an interviewer that Kilmer was suffering from the same type of cancer that he was diagnosed with and that he wished him the best.
Kilmer’s response was as follows.
“I love Michael Douglas but he is misinformed,” the Top Gun star wrote. “The last time I spoke to him was almost two years ago, when I asked him for a referral for a specialist to get a diagnosis for a lump in my throat, which prevented me from continuing a tour of my play CITIZEN TWAIN. I ended up using a team at UCLA and have no cancer whatsoever.”
Whether or not he knew at that time that he had the disease, or if the diagnosis came later, it is what it is. There’s no shame in hiding a disease, however, especially from the media. Cancer is hard enough to fight without cameras flashing and people asking questions documenting your every move. Kilmer did what he needed to do so that he could have a safe and full recovery.
‘…but I knew him’
