Will Reeve Reveals Testicular Cancer Battle, Now Cancer-Free

GMA correspondent Will Reeve disclosed he was diagnosed with an aggressive testicular cancer in April, finished chemotherapy in July, and is now cancer-free.

Will Reeve, the 34-year-old ABC News correspondent and son of Christopher Reeve, revealed Tuesday that he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in April, just months after his January wedding to Amanda Dubin. He found a hard, tender lump in his left testicle in the shower, and at his wife's urging underwent an ultrasound that confirmed a mass requiring removal. According to ABC News, a May orchiectomy led to a diagnosis of embryonal carcinoma, an aggressive form of the disease typically found in young to middle-aged people. A June six-hour retroperitoneal lymph node dissection removed dozens of abdominal lymph nodes, some cancerous, prompting two cycles of chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering that ended in late July.

The surprise is not only that a morning-show correspondent was quietly battling cancer through his own broadcasts all summer, but that he is now declaring it in the rearview mirror so soon. Page Six reports he told GMA viewers, "The diagnosis was a shock and the treatments were a slog," adding that "this cancer is in the rearview mirror." He received clean scans on September 8 and is considered cancer-free per a check-up, according to AOL.

The regimen was grueling. On treatment days Reeve and his wife sat for nine hours at Memorial Sloan Kettering, with two hours of chemotherapy followed by seven hours of cold capping, a process used to help prevent hair loss. According to ABC News, side effects between cycles included bone pain, ringing ears, night sweats, blood clots and headaches. Page Six reports he also banked sperm so he and Dubin can start a family one day via in vitro fertilization, and he credited his wife as his caregiver, comparing her to his mother Dana, who cared for his father after his 1995 paralysis.

The treatment carried deep personal weight. Dana Reeve died of lung cancer at age 44 in March 2006 at Memorial Sloan Kettering — the same building where her son rang the bell at the end of his treatment. "The irony is not lost on me that 20 years after my mom died of lung cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering, there I was in the same building getting treated for cancer," Reeve told PEOPLE, according to AOL. He said the experience let him live what each parent endured: his mother as a patient, his father during the nine years his family cared for him after his paralysis.

Reeve says he is going to be fine and calls the episode "one heck of a chapter," but his stated purpose is early detection: he told PEOPLE, according to Page Six, that it "could have been much worse had I ignored it or delayed going to the doctor." Viewers can hear more on "Good Morning America" Wednesday and Thursday from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. ET, where ABC says a doctor and other cancer patients will join the conversation. His message doubles as a public-health nudge for young men to report lumps promptly rather than assume, as he initially did, that it was nothing.