Wasn't Spartacus' Andy Whitfield Supposed to Be Cancer-Free?

Things seemed to be equally OK in July. During Comic-Con, Whitfield's former Spartacus producer told the crowd that the actor was doing well and even mulling collaboration on a fresh project, "a project in which he wouldn't have to take his clothes off," according to the Orlando Sentinel, who quoted producer Steven S. DeKnight.

Sadly, the enthusiasm was premature.

Oncologists tell me that this particular kind of cancer is infamous for simply disappearing off the radar, only to return with even more strength and virulence.

"What happens is that there are just a few cells left," explains Dr. Bruce Cheson, head of hematology at Georgetown University Hospital and chairman of the Lymphoma Research Foundation's scientific advisory board. "Scanners have a limit of resolution below which those cells can't be picked up." For example, a PET scan has about a 90-ish percent "negative predictive value." That means that, 5 or 10 percent of the time, "the scan misses it, because the cancer is too small to be picked up."

The cells that do remain under the radar are often very resistant to treatment, says Dr. Elena Gitelson, medical oncologist with the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University.

"About 99.9 percent of the cancer could be dead, but the rest is dormant," she explains. "Those remaining cells will have acquired new genetic abnormalities and become more aggressive, and grow even faster."

We can't be sure that this is what happened with Whitfield, but it's not unlikely.

If you want to know more about non-Hodgkins lymphoma, including how you can support people fighting the disease, there's no better time than now: September is Blood Cancer Awareness Month.