Eric Braeden, the actor best known for his role as Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless, has announced he’s been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
In a video posted to Facebook late last week, the daytime soap star shared the symptoms that lead to his diagnosis.
He first started undergoing health evaluations as he was recovering from knee replacement surgery.
“Whilst recuperating from the knee surgery, I began to have problems with my prostate,” he said. “I hate to be this personal, but I think this may be good for some older guys who may or may not listen to this. It’ll happen to them.”
“Your prostate grows as you grow older. Period,” he continued. “Everything grows. All the wrong things grow as you grow older. My prostate, I’d had some problems with it before. It manifests itself by you having to pee a lot. And it got to the point where I had to get up almost every half hour.”
He said his frequent urge to urinate resulted in a trip to the doctor, where it was recommended he undergo a procedure called a UroLift, which uses tiny implants to lift and hold prostate tissue so it doesn’t block the urethra.
In that time, however, he found he was increasingly unable to pee – calling it “one of the most painful experiences I’ve had” – and was fitted for a catheter.
A few days later, doctors removed the catheter and evaluated his bladder with a camera which, at the time, appeared clear.
“This was six weeks or two months before something more serious happened,” he said. “So…he didn’t relieve the problem, only momentarily, only symptomatically.”
Eric Braeden (as Victor Newman) and Melody Thomas Scott (as Nikki Reed) on ‘Young and the Restless’ on February 2, 1984.
CBS Photo Archive
Once again, finding himself unable to urinate, he returned to the hospital. A few days later, another urologist found a spot on his bladder using the same procedure.
“The same methodology used by the other urologist, but six weeks prior. And he looks at it … and he says, ‘That spot on the screen.’ He says, ‘You have cancer.’”
Braeden says he underwent surgery to perform the UroLift and removed the cancer at the same time, but a biopsy revealed there were still remaining cancer cells and he’s now undergoing immunotherapy treatment to kick the cancer to the curb.
“So I didn’t have a really bad reaction the first day,” he said of his first infusion. “It was OK, a little flu-sy, but not bad. And it got better as the days went by.”
Since his cancer diagnosis, Braeden said he has taken time to “slow down” and “listen to my body more.”
He continued: “If you’re seeing me a little under the weather, yeah, I have been. But I will lick this. This bastard ain’t gonna get me — I’m gonna get it. All right? I’ll be in top form again soon.”
Braeden joined The Young and the Restless as ruthless businessman Victor Newman in 1980. In that time, he’s appeared in more than 3,000 episodes and has won multiple awards for his work.
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