stage 4 throat cancer

Michael Douglas is adverse a boxy battle, as the actor-turned-cancer-patient undergoes radiation and chemotherapy to amusement a bump at the abject of his tongue.

But the 65-year-old Oscar-winning amateur is not about to accord up.

"It's a fight," Douglas told People. "It absolutely knocks you out."

Appearing aftermost night on "The Late Show with David Letterman," Douglas appear that he has advanced, Stage 4 cancer.

"You've never looked more acceptable to me, and this proves that you're a boxy guy, for God's sakes," the talk-show host said, cartoon acclaim from the flat audience.

"Let's aloof say ... I'm appealing lit up appropriate now," Douglas replied.

The amateur additionally talked about his affairs for recovery.

"I am arch and neck," Douglas said. "I am aloft the neck, so nothing's gone down, and the expectations are good..."

Experts accede with Douglas's upbeat assessment.

Dr. Robert Haddad, an oncologist at Dana-Farber Blight Institute in Boston, who is not complex in Douglas's care, says this affectionate of blight about responds able-bodied to the arduous aggregate of radiation and chemotherapy.

Douglas begin out he had throat blight in aboriginal August afterwards experiencing throat and ear pain.

During the months of analysis that lie ahead, Douglas may accept to be fed through a tube, as burning will be difficult, says Haddad. Many patients advance astringent aperture sores and charge able affliction medications - alike narcotics, like morphine - to get through it. The ancillary furnishings of radiation can aftermost for months afterwards treatment.

But the acute money is on a abounding recovery. Douglas's wife, extra Catherine Zeta-Jones, 40, told People that "if there's annihilation Michael has, it's strength."