Gabrielle Union has given an update about her husband Dwyane Wade’s cancer.
The 52-year-old Bring It On star discussed Wade’s health during Thursday’s episode of The View, a month after he revealed his diagnosis. She shared that he’s doing much better now after having 40 percent of his right kidney removed at the end of 2023.
“He’s had the surgery, and he’s cancer-free, but it was a challenge,” Union said.
Earlier in the conversation, the actor recalled how “shocked” she was when she first heard about Wade’s diagnosis.
“You hear cancer, and you [feel] paralyzed,” she said. “Because you think of the absolute worst-case scenario. I have so many friends who are cancer survivors. I didn’t go there. I went to, ‘He’s gone.”
She acknowledged that it took her “a while” to wrap her head around his diagnosis, especially since he kept his condition “under the radar.”
“He didn’t tell anyone,” Union added.
While attending the screening of her new movie, Riff Raff, in New York on Wednesday, Union spoke to Access Hollywood about her husband and praised him for keeping his cancer diagnosis out of the public eye.
“He was smart to delay talking about his diagnosis and the surgery for over a year to give us all a little time to make peace with it and let all of our very intense fears kind of dissipate a little bit. But he’s great,” she said.
“We’re proud of him that he was brave enough to not only go through all the things that he needed to do to take care of his health, but to share it with the world and hopefully save other people,” Union continued.
After the actor and the former NBA star married in 2014, they welcomed a daughter, Kaavia (now six). Wade also shares two children, Zaire, 22, and Zaya, 17, with ex-wife Siovaughn Funches and 10-year-old son, Xavier, with ex Aja Metoyer.
During a January episode of his The Why with Dwyane Wade podcast, the former Miami Heat player recalled how he learned of his diagnosis after years of putting off his annual check-up. Wade finally made an appointment, explaining that he was experiencing stomach issues and cramps and was urinating slowly.
The doctor did a full body scan on Wade and discovered a “cyst/tumor” on one of his kidneys. After getting surgery to remove the cyst in 2023, a biopsy confirmed the tumor was cancerous.
“Obviously, at 41 years old, [I’m a] pretty healthy guy that did have cancer,” the former athlete said. “Thank God that I did do the surgery because the tumor was cancerous. So, I have one kidney and I have another kidney that is [at] 60 percent. They took 40 percent of my kidney to make sure they can get all the cancer off it.”
