“Home Alone” actor Ken Hudson Campbell 'doing well' after fans help fund cancer surgery
Home Alone actor Ken Hudson Campbell is "doing well" and is on the mend after successfully having surgery to remove his cancer.
In an interview with PEOPLE, Campbell's daughter Michaela provided an update on her dad — best known as Santa in the Christmastime classic, and for kissing Bill Murray in Groundhog Day — after a 10-hour procedure last week removed his tumor, lymph nodes, and a significant portion of his jaw.
Michaela told the outlet her had is "doing well" and is still in the ICU recovering from the procedure, which also saw part of his leg bone get removed to help reconstruct portions of his jaw.
“He is conscious and they took him off of his respirator, so he's breathing by himself,” she says. “They said that they were able to take all of the cancer out as well so he won’t need chemotherapy.”
The update comes after Michaela and her family started a GoFundMe campaign ahead of Campbell's surgery to help cover his out-of-pocket medical expenses as he recovers, especially given the possibility "that the procedure will affect his ability to work as an actor in the future," the page says.
Famous pals like Steve Carell, Jeff Garlin, and Tim Meadows contributed to the campaign, with Carell, a fellow Second City alum, posting, "Love you Ken."
According to Michaela, the type of cancer Campbell was diagnosed with was squamous cell carcinoma. “It was a big tumor in his mouth. The last two years he's gotten lots of biopsies done and they've tried to control it. And it was only this year that it just got very, very aggressive. So when he got his biopsy in October, that is when we got the diagnosis,” she explained.
Now that the surgery is complete, Campbell will start radiation treatment five days a week before entering a six-month recovery period. “I think the hardest part of this is going to be him losing his speech and his ability to talk. So speech therapy is going to play a big role in it,” Michaela said, adding, “We're kind of playing it one step at a time, depending on how debilitated he is. If he needs extra help, we might put him into a nursing home for a little while, but if not, we're going to take him back home and we still will be hiring post-op care help with that.”
Michaela told PEOPLE her father has been “overwhelmed” by the response to the GoFundMe, which has surpassed its goal of raising $100,000. “The first day we posted it, every time he read something, he would just burst into tears,” she said. “It was the first time he really got emotional about the whole situation. It was kind of a shock to him to feel so loved.”
She continued, “It really means the world. My family's been struggling for a long time financially. So just having my dad's friends come together, this is just very overwhelming and it really takes a lot of stress off of my family's shoulders.”
Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.
Related content:
Home Alone actor Ken Hudson Campbell launches GoFundMe to help pay for cancer surgery
Macaulay Culkin has tearful reunion with Home Alone mom Catherine O'Hara at Walk of Fame ceremony
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.
