James Van Der Beek shared that he has been diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
The Dawson’s Creek star posted a statement about his health update on Instagram on Nov. 3 after first revealing the news to People.
“‘It is cancer…’ Each year, approximately 2 billion people around the world receive this diagnosis,” he wrote. “And I’m one of them.”
“There’s no playbook for how announce these things, but I’d planned on talking about it at length with People magazine at some point soon … to raise awareness and tell my story on my own terms,” he continued. “But that plan had to be altered early this morning when I was informed that a tabloid was going to run with the news.”
Van Der Beek wrote he has “been dealing with this privately until now, getting treatment and dialing in my overall health with greater focus than ever before.”
Despite the health update, he shared that he feels hopeful about the future and apologized to those in his life who learned the news from the press.
“I’m in a good place and feeling strong,” he wrote. “It’s been quite the initiation, and I’ll tell you more when I’m ready. Apologies to all the people in my life who I’d planned on telling myself. Nothing about this process has occurred on my preferred timeline. … But we roll with it, taking each surprise as a signpost, pointing us toward a greater destiny than we would have discovered without divine intervention.”
“Please know that my family and I deeply appreciate all the love and support,” he concluded. “More to come.”
Van Der Beek and his wife Kimberly have six children.
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