Pauly Shore was recently shaken up when a full-body preventative scan revealed a tumor growing in his pancreas — but he’s since had it removed and is on the mend.
The comedian and actor opened up about the health scare in a candid Instagram post Wednesday, explaining that he got a “head to toe” scan in Las Vegas a few months ago.
“They check for tumors, cancer, aneurysms, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, you name it,” Shore wrote. “Being in my 50s, I thought it was the right thing to do. A week later, they called me with the results. They noticed something in my abdominal area. It was a tumor inside my pancreas.”
Fortunately, Shore said, the tumor was benign and “might have been there for 15 to 20 years.” But while it wasn’t an emergency, his doctor thought it should be removed, and Shore admitted that the situation weighed on him.
“Mentally, it really messed with me,” he wrote. “Knowing there was a tumor inside me… Could it grow? Burst? Turn into something worse? You just don”t know.”
An accompanying video showed Shore in a hospital bed prepped for surgery and joking with a nurse. It then picked up several days after the procedure that “took the little gremlin out of me.” Once again in good spirits, Shore thanked his doctors and said, “now it’s healing time.”
In his lengthy Instagram caption, Shore urged his followers to consider getting whole-body scans, though they are typically expensive and not covered by insurance, and some experts question the practice.
“Maybe I can help save someone’s life by encouraging them to get a preventative scan, or even just going to the doctor and talking about prevention,” Shore wrote. “And maybe they can save someone else’s life too.”
Signing off, he added, “I’m all right, and I’m healing every day.”
Shore does not appear to have a personal history of cancer, though the disease has touched his life in profound ways.
In 2022, he visited friend and fellow comedian Louie Anderson at a hospital in Las Vegas where Anderson was receiving treatment for an aggressive form of lymphoma he’d been battling privately for a decade.
“I say this with a heavy heart just left the hospital in Las Vegas where Louie Anderson his sisters and close friend were kind enough to let me say my goodbyes he’s still with us but keep him in your prayers,” Shore wrote on social media at the time. The next day, Anderson died at 68.
Blue Eyed Jack Production l The Lewis Brothers/YouTube
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Shore has recently been engrossed in another kind of tribute to an entertainment legend, Richard Simmons, whom he’s set to play in a feature film based on a short that’s already made the rounds.
After Simmons’ death in July 2024, Shore offered a touching public tribute to the fitness guru: “I hope you’re at peace and twinkling up in the heavens. Please give my mother Mitzi and my father Sammy a big hug and a kiss for me.”
