Jeff Bridges Says His Tumor Has Shrunk “To The Size Of A Marble”

Jeff Bridges is a true fighter and a survivor. To this point, the actor has been successful in overcoming both an advanced stage of cancer and a severe case of Covid-19.

Bridges claims in a new cover story for AARP magazine that he was taking a break from filming his series “The Old Man” when he “was doing some exercises while on the ground and felt what seemed like a bone in my stomach.” Bridges was referring to the pain he had in his abdomen.

Bridges said that his wife, Susan Geston, had urged that he be checked out, but he was afraid to go to the doctor’s office since he wasn’t experiencing any discomfort.

“I’m hiking and feeling great. My shins really itch, and I think, Oh, I just got, you know, dry skin,” Bridges recalled. “Then I had night sweats, but thought, That’s just hot summer nights. It turns out those are lymphoma symptoms.”

The man, who is now 73 years old, claims that he had a tumor measuring 9 by 12 inches, and that he started receiving chemotherapy treatment for it.

Then, Covid struck him hard, which resulted in a hospitalization that lasted for five weeks, in part because the chemotherapy had destroyed his immune system. “Cancer was nothing compared to the Covid,” he said.

According to Bridges, at first he was prepared to accept the fact that he was becoming old and would eventually pass away. After that, he started to put more of an emphasis on the stoicism that he had acquired while playing Dan Chase, his character as a former CIA agent on “The Old Man.”

“For me, in that hospital bed, the obstacle was death. And that was the way. I kept thinking, Here’s the problem, you know? Here’s the challenge,” he said. “I asked myself, ‘How are you going to go about it?’ And I thought, I’m a dancer, man, and I’m a musician. I’m going to jam with this situation, you know?”

Now, Bridges claims that the size of his tumor has decreased “to the size of a marble,” that he has recovered from the side effects of Covid, and that he is shooting Season 2 of “The Old Man.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever work again, really,” he said. “So at first I said, ‘Well, we’ll see.’ But eventually that became, ‘Maybe I can.’ I have to admit that I was still frightened of going back to work. Then I began to think of my recovery as a gift being presented.”