Melissa Gilbert witnessed her TV dad, Michael Landon, fight a debilitating disease that ultimately took his life.
At age 54, the actor who played patriarch Charles Ingalls in “Little House on the Prairie” was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died three months after publicly announcing his diagnosis in 1991.
“It is really a brutal and pernicious disease,” Gilbert told People magazine. “To me, it felt like a tornado. You have no warning. It’s just there and the survival rate is virtually nil.”
“I’d seen Michael have meningitis, I’d seen him with broken bones, I’d seen him with a lot of illnesses over the course of our time together,” the 60-year-old reflected. “But this took him and decimated him so fast.”
“This man was the epitome of physical well-being,” the former child star continued. “I always described him as an upside-down triangle, so strong, in such great shape, so healthy. And to see it happen so quickly and so almost violently, it felt like an enemy I wanted to defeat.”
It wouldn’t be the last time Gilbert witnessed a loved one battle the illness. Her longtime pal, Patrick Swayze, died in 2009 at age 57 from pancreatic cancer.
“He was able to fight for a lot longer than Michael Landon was able to,” said Gilbert. “But still… You see them before, and you see the pictures of them as they’re going through it, and it is devastating.”
“This is the thing that killed two of the strongest, most extraordinarily extraordinary physical specimens of men I’d ever known in my life,” she shared. “Athletic, talented, I mean, you name it. To me, these guys were pillars, almost like superheroes.
“And to see something like that take them the way it did… And it’s not just the person going through it. I’m watching a whole family suffer along with both of these men as they are suffering in a way that is indescribable.”
According to the outlet, Gilbert is teaming up with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) to raise money for the charity. The nonprofit aims to fund research, provide patient/caregiver support, as well as advocate for increased federal research funding for those affected by the disease.
In time for November – Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month – Gilbert’s lifestyle brand, Modern Prairie, is launching a special collection featuring purple, the official color of pancreatic cancer awareness. Gilbert told the outlet that all proceeds from the collection would support PanCAN.
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“It is absolutely incumbent upon us to use that money for good,” said Gilbert. “This was always going to be a goal of ours. And I think our relationship with PanCAN is just the first step in that direction.”
Landon’s daughter, Leslie Landon Matthews, told Fox News Digital in June that the star had a stubborn streak when it came to prioritizing his checkups.
“The one thing that I know was part of my dad’s personality was his stubbornness,” the former actress explained. “And I don’t think staying on top of his health was a priority. I think he put it aside.”
“I know that my mom often talked about getting him to his physicals,” she reflected.
“[That] was always a feat. And so, by the time my dad was having uncontrollable pain in his stomach, he was on vacation with my stepmom and younger sibling…. He flew home early from Utah to go to his doctor’s appointment. He couldn’t ignore it anymore.”
“I think if my dad was alive today, he would say, ‘Boy, I blew it,’” said Landon Matthews. “’I really should have been staying on top of my health every year and making sure I was getting full checkups.”
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“If you’re a caretaker, you’re taking care of your kids and your household, you [do] get busy and distracted. And, of course, your main priority is your family. So, it’s very easy to put your health on the back burner. You need to schedule [your checkups] just like you would for anything else in your life and make it a priority.”
According to PanCAN, pancreatic cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. It has a five-year survival rate of 13%. It noted that there’s no standard early detection test and few effective treatment options.
“He really held onto the hope,” said Landon Matthews about her father. “And I think he would be blown away by what’s been done with the research and with the progress of pancreatic cancer. From diagnosis to death, it was three months for him. It was a very short amount of time that he had.”
Landon Matthews said that during her father’s final months, he continued to prioritize his family. It gave him the strength to keep going.
“I think deep down he might’ve known that he wasn’t going to survive that particular cancer,” she said. “There really wasn’t a lot back then. We’re talking over 30 years ago. I know that he tried some experimental treatments. He really, really, really tried to beat this cancer, especially because he still had little ones to raise.”
Before losing her father, Landon Matthews made a “goodbye book” for the star. All of the children gathered together and presented it to him.
“Each of us had a couple of pages, and we had put on a beautiful plexiglass cover,” Landon Matthews recalled. “And the cover of it said ‘Dad’… it was all of our little heads making up the letters.
“I think we wanted to let him know that, no matter what, we are all here for him, that we cherish him, we love him, but we also wanted to let him know that we were all going to be OK if he wasn’t going to survive. We were all going to be able to love each other and stay together.”
