Will Reeve Testicular Cancer Reveal: GMA Host Is Cancer-Free

Will Reeve walked onto the Good Morning America set on Tuesday with his wife Amanda Dubin and told viewers something he had been carrying since spring. The thirty-four-year-old ABC News correspondent, and the son of the late Superman actor Christopher Reeve, revealed his testicular cancer diagnosis on the broadcast, sharing news he had kept private all summer. "Right off the top, I need everyone to know, I am OK," he said on air, according to USA Today, before adding that the disease is now, in his words, "in the rearview mirror." The Will Reeve testicular cancer announcement marks the first time he has spoken publicly about the ordeal.

The Will Reeve testicular cancer timeline began in April, a few months after his January wedding, when he noticed a hard, tender lump in his left testicle while in the shower. He later said he assumed it was nothing and would go away. His wife thought otherwise and urged him to get an ultrasound. The images "confirmed the unimaginable": a mass that had to come out, according to coverage of the announcement. Reeve underwent an orchiectomy in May to remove the testicle, and the surgery produced a diagnosis of embryonal carcinoma, an aggressive form of the disease. According to the Cleveland Clinic, cited by USA Today, the prognosis for that cancer is good when treatment starts before it has spread.

A summer of surgery, then chemo

The Will Reeve testicular cancer diagnosis was not resolved by a single operation. In June, Reeve went back under the knife for a second, six-hour surgery: a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection that removed dozens of lymph nodes from his abdomen in an effort to keep the cancer from spreading. The procedure took place at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York, kept him in the hospital for nearly a week, and cost him an assignment he had been looking forward to, covering the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals for ABC News.

The Will Reeve testicular cancer treatment was not over yet. Three of the lymph nodes that were removed tested positive for cancer, so Reeve and his doctors chose two cycles of chemotherapy, a course meant to slash the odds of the cancer coming back. Treatment started in July at Sloan Kettering, with each cycle pairing a chemo infusion with hours of cold capping, a cooling technique used to help prevent hair loss. The side effects stacked up regardless: ringing ears, night sweats, blood clots, constant headaches, bone pain. He kept working through much of it. "The diagnosis was a shock and the treatments were a slog," he told GMA viewers on Tuesday. By the end of July, he was ringing the bell at the hospital that signals the end of cancer treatment.

Why he decided to tell the story

The Will Reeve testicular cancer story carries extra weight because of his family history. Reeve was a toddler when his father was thrown from a horse in 1995 and paralyzed from the neck down. Christopher Reeve died in 2004. His mother, Dana Reeve, died from lung cancer in 2006, in the very same Memorial Sloan Kettering building where her son would later be treated. "I was raised to share one's struggles if, in doing so, that might help others," Reeve told People in an interview recapped by Entertainment Weekly, adding that watching his parents turn their adversity into something hopeful had shaped how he tries to live.

The Will Reeve testicular cancer reveal was framed as a public service message as much as a personal update: he wants men to get checked when something feels off. He said on Tuesday's broadcast that he wanted people to know the disease can strike anyone, calling the diagnosis shocking and weird and the subject slightly awkward to discuss, while stressing that patients almost always end up okay, as reported by The Spun. A screening on September 8 confirmed he is cancer-free, and GMA plans to keep the conversation going with doctors on its Wednesday and Thursday morning shows, from seven to nine in the morning Eastern time.

For more on this site, see how Dolly Parton kept a secret cancer treatment trip to Germany quiet and the new blood test that catches pancreatic cancer early. Either way, the Will Reeve testicular cancer story has the ending every patient hopes for: caught early, treated aggressively, and now firmly in the rearview mirror.