“You don’t want to be at Stage IV,” Douglas told David Letterman during an appearance Tuesday on the Late Show. “You’d rather be down at Stage 1.”
But the actor said he’s optimistic
Douglas, 65, told Letterman he’d just finished his first week of radiation and chemotherapy, and that his treatment would last eight weeks. When Letterman told Douglas that he looked and sounded good, the actor said that as the treatment progressed, he’d be less able to speak and swallow. Already, he said, he’d been “knocked down hard” by the first week of treatment.
The diagnosis came, Douglas said, after he and his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, spent a “wonderful summer” in Spain with their two children: Dylan, 10; and Carys, 7. Although he’d been to a “litany of doctors” before the vacation because of a persistent sore throat, Douglas said, none found anything wrong until after the family returned to the U.S. (Smoking is a risk factor for throat cancer; until two years ago, Douglas was a smoker.)
The actor’s latest movie, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, is set to open later this month. But Douglas told Letterman he wouldn’t be able to promote the movie abroad.
Asked about his statistical chances of beating the illness, Douglas said, “The percentages are very good ... right now, it looks like it should be 80 percent.”
