Michael Douglas reveals doctors missed his cancer for nine months

Michael Douglas has revealed how doctors missed his cancer for nine months despite his tumour being the size of a walnut on his tongue.

In his most candid interview on his cancer battle, he said: “I knew something was wrong...my tooth was really sore, and I thought I had an infection.

"I had two rounds of appointments with ear-nose-and-throat doctors and periodontists. They each gave me antibiotics.

"And then more antibiotics, but I still had pain.”

After having more checks, the tumour was finally found on his tongue in 2010.

He added: “Two days later, after the biopsy, the doctor called and said I had to come in. He told it to me it was stage-four cancer. I said, ‘Stage four. Jesus.’

"And that was that. After complaining for nine months and them not finding anything, and then they told me I was stage four? That was a big day.”

The star said that the illness gave him a “new rejuvenation” and he now enjoys making movies more.

He said: “It feels great to be back at work. Maybe that’s the benefit of taking a break with cancer: Then, people say, ‘What happened to him? Please come back.’”

Douglas, has revealed that he believes being diagnosed with throat cancer was “karmic retribution” for his decades of success.

The film icon said that things had been “going good for me for a long time” and that illness which nearly claimed his life was meant to balance things up.

Douglas, who has won four Golden Globes and two Academy Awards including one for his role as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, said he “knows what it is like to be down” and admitted being distraught at seeing good friends like Dallas star Larry Hagman succumb to the same kind of cancer that he nearly did.

The 68-year-old said: “That’s life. Things had been going good for me for a long time. I was ready for some karmic retribution.”

Douglas, now married to Catherine Zeta Jones who’s currently fighting depression in rehab, said that as he went through the radiotherapy and chemotherapy which beat the cancer, he was so weak he just laid on the sofa.

He lost 45lbs eating mostly soup as he spent hours watching sports and TV shows, in particular anything where he “didn’t know the ending”.

The couple have two children together, Carys, 10, and Dylan, 12, and Douglas has another son, Cameron, with his former wife, Diandra.

In another setback to the family, Cameron, 34, is currently serving a nine-and-a-half year sentence for dealing crystal meth then being caught having done drugs in prison.

The latter offence added four-and-a-half years to his term, which Douglas feels was too harsh.

Douglas has also been in rehab. This was in 1992 for reported sex addiction.

In the interview with New York magazine he denied that it was for that and said that it was “really because I was depressed after I lost my stepfather, whom I was very close to”.

Reflecting on his career Douglas said that being the son of somebody famous is “complicated” and that he was acutely aware of the pressure he was being put under.

He said: “Success is expected, and yet the track record of the second generation is not great. Only a small group of us, like Jane Fonda, have succeeded.

“The good and the bad of being second generation is there are no illusions: I always knew that this was a business. It can be wonderful, but it is a business...In the past, on purpose, I’ve never known what movie I’m going to do next.

“I never knew how I would feel when I finished a picture. Now it feels great to be back at work.