Soap Star Christian J. LeBlanc Reveals Cancer Battle and Remission
Christian J. LeBlanc revealed he quietly beat cancer, and The Young and the Restless fans helped him see the early signs of his illness.
“The fans caught it,” LeBlanc, 65, shared during an interview with New Orleans’ CBS affiliate, WWL-TV, on Tuesday, October 24. “I was getting people [saying], like, ‘Your eye is a little Jim Carrey[-esque] that way.’”
The actor was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in June. “There was a tumor right here,” he said, pointing to the space between his brows, “pressing on my optic nerve.”
LeBlanc went to the eye doctor first after noticing that his left eye was “wonky,” but he now realizes that other indicators were present while he was on the set of The Young and the Restless, where he has played Michael Baldwin for more than 20 years.
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“They put my wedding rings on, [characters] Lauren and Michael’s wedding ring, and I put my hand down and the ring fell off without friction. And I said, ‘Well what an odd thing,'” LeBlanc recalled. “My nose started bleeding on set sometimes. [My left] eye kind of got a little wonky.”
His optometrist suggested the soap opera star see a neurological ophthalmologist, who discovered a tumor in his sinus cavity. “I’d never spent a day in the hospital in my 65 years until this year,” LeBlanc said.
He had to start treatment right away. “It’s a very fast cancer and that is the danger of it, but it’s also because the speed of which a cell reproduces is a signifier of cancer,” the Daytime Emmy Award winner explained. “It also makes it very obvious that it’s a cancer and easily attacked and easily spotted once you get in there.”
Multiple myeloma is a “very common cancer,” LeBlanc said, which is why he is already in remission. “It is such a well researched cancer and they have made so many huge steps with taking the pain out of chemo and making more constructive immunotherapies,” he explained.
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The treatment caused him to lose weight. “They said, ‘Eat like it’s your job,.’” he recalled. “I lost 35 pounds in two months. Not in a good way, but when they said, ‘Eat like it’s your job,’ I said, ‘I was raised to fulfill this promise.'”
LeBlanc is now healthy and working with The Little Big Cup and the Cancer Support Community (CSC) to help other cancer patients in need.
“When they called me up, I’m thinking of medical support, but what these people do is all the surrounding things that happen to you when you’re diagnosed with something like this,” LeBlanc said of the organizations. “So it’s about how to mentally deal with it, how financially you might cope with some of the expenses being out of work and all these amazing things.”
