William Shatner and his daughter, Melanie Shatner Gretsch, are opening up about a terrifying journey they shared together — battling Stage 4 cancer at the same time.
The Star Trek icon explained three years ago he had a lump that a doctor told him was a clogged salivary gland — but after a month the lump started to grow so he asked a friend who was a doctor to examine it.
He was told it needed to be removed, which was also confirmed by an oncologist.
“It had spread to my brain,” Shatner said. “There were little points of light in my brain and little points of light … I think in my lung.”
The diagnosis was Stage 4 malignant melanoma.
“You need to check again”
Nearly a year before Shatner, now 95 years old, was diagnosed, his daughter found a lump on her breast. Shatner Gretsch said her doctor initially did not find anything concerning on her ultrasound, but she said she knew something was wrong.
“Something just said, ‘You need to check again,'” she recalled.
The father and daughter both said Shatner Gretsch would have died if she didn’t question the initial results.
“It was a super aggressive kind of breast cancer, and it had already escaped the breast wall and had gone into my chest,” Shatner Gretsch explained.
She underwent months of chemotherapy, 30 rounds of radiation, a double mastectomy and a year of immunotherapy while leaning on her father for support.
The 61-year-old recalled one night in particular when she reached out to her dad, saying, “I was just in one of those moments where you want your daddy, you know, like you’re little, you’re feeling very little and you’re feeling this is really scary.”
Shatner Gretsch called her dad “a source of calm” for her.
“He got out of bed and drove over here, gave me the bear hug,” she said. “He said to me, ‘This is just a blip in your life. You’re going to get past this.'”
“Somehow we would survive”
Through their emotional journey, Shatner Gretsch remembers getting her first clear PET scan early on and calling her dad.
“It was the third time I heard you cry in my whole life,” she told him.
For Shatner, he said it’s his instinct and intuition as a father to protect.
“Here was something I couldn’t protect and then I didn’t need to protect, she was going to be all right,” he said.
Both are now cancer-free and sharing their journey on a new podcast, “No Time But Now,” that premieres Wednesday and focuses on medicine, science and spirituality.
“I always felt that somehow we would survive,” Shatner said.
He told CBS News he chose not to disclose his diagnosis originally because he was afraid it would impact his ability to find work and he loves what he does.