Tom Hanks' whole world stopped when he heard his wife Rita Wilson had been diagnosed with cancer.
The 59-year-old star has been married to Rita since 1988 and in December 2014 she discovered she had breast cancer. In April (15) the 59-year-old actress announced she had undergone a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery after being diagnosed with the illness, and two months later she confirmed she had beaten the disease. Even now Tom struggles to come to terms with what his family has been through.
"What has been so amazing about it is how powerfully it plays out in a relatively short period of time," he told Britain's The Daily Mail newspaper.
"We all know by now what hell that sort of health crisis is. It just comes along out of the blue and everything else stops because the only thing to do is to drop everything else and pay attention to myriad stuff that needs to be attended to."
Due to when Rita received the health news, the family's 2014 festive season was very different to normal. That will make the upcoming holiday period all the sweeter now she is better, although Tom realises their privileged position helped.
"Rita and I are lucky because we can afford the best healthcare in the world, we knew that blessing right off, but while it was happening, all I could do was bow down before the courage of my wife," he explained.
The star isn't totally zen about what happened though, reserving the right to some fury over people he believes cash in on the ill health of others. He is angry that some people pray on those with cancer, and he's begged anyone who is fighting the disease not to be duped.
"When they find out you have a certain illness, particularly cancer, they will immediately try to make money off you," he said. "They do this by pushing some procedures that might have a degree of science to them that might make them accurate, and some others that are complete quackery.
"Like anything from saying, 'Go to some clinic in Bolivia and they’ll cure you,' or, 'Just go on a diet of peach stones,' or something crazy. These people are just trying to make money from the illness and they only add to the difficulty of what is already going on because they are dealing in false hopes."
