“The Walking Dead” alum Erik Jensen was recently diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, his family revealed in a GoFundMe post.
“After miraculously surviving a brain aneurysm just a year and a half ago, our beloved Erik Jensen was just diagnosed with Stage IV colorectal cancer,” they wrote last week.
“As many of you know, Erik is a deeply devoted father to 13-year-old Sadie, who’s the light of his life; an incredible husband to Jessica [Blank], his partner in art and life for the last 23 years; and a profoundly hardworking, generous artist who has spent decades committed to creating work in service of healing, justice, and making the world a better place,” they continued.
They went on to call Jensen — who played Dr. Steven Edwards in Season 5 of the hit AMC show — one of the “most hardworking, loving, truthful and devoted people.”
“He needs to help his daughter grow up. He needs to stick around for the beautiful community he and Jess have built. And he has a lot more art to make in the world,” they continued.
While the cancer has already “metastasized to his liver,” Jensen “is young and strong” and hopes to work as much as possible while undergoing chemo.
“His doctors think they have a shot at shrinking the tumors enough to do two very major surgeries and get them all out,” the family explained. “He can make it through this. But Erik and his family are in for the fight of their lives, and they need your support.”
Despite just the physical toll on the Broadway star, the diagnosis has also “put their family in an extremely precarious financial position” — especially amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.
On top of their mounting medical bills, the couple’s income has drastically declined due to the strike and they are now at risk of losing their health insurance.
Several of Jensen’s former co-stars were quick to share the GoFundMe link on their social media pages — including Scott M. Gimple and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
“Never had the chance to work with Erik… until now anyway,” Morgan, who joined the cast in Season 6, tweeted Tuesday.
“only have heard many things about what a great guy he is,” he continued. “I do know he and his [family] could use some help…. Of any and all kind.”
As of Oct. 25, the family had already raised over $90,000, nearly one-third of their $300,000 goal.
The heartbreaking diagnosis comes less than two years after Jensen, who also appeared on “CSI” and “Alias,” suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage, more commonly known as a brain aneurysm.
In February 2022, Jensen was working on a play at home when he started to feel a bit uneasy.
“I all of a sudden said, ‘I have a headache,’” he recalled during an interview with Broadway News earlier this year. “I had a seizure and I passed out cold.”
“Fifty percent of the people who get it die outright,” the actor explained, noting that the few people who do survive usually end up with cognitive or physical difficulties.
Miraculously, Jensen was able to make a full recovery and went back to work just four weeks later.
