As followers of actor Christian LeBlanc know, the actor, who plays Michael Baldwin on The Young and the Restless, had a real-life cancer battle. The three-time Daytime Emmy-winner shared recently how his Y&R family was instrumental in helping him realize that he needed to get some medical aid.

The Young and the Restless, wedding ring blues

LeBlanc and his TV wife, Tracey Bregman (Lauren), appeared on SOAPY, the internet podcast hosted by Greg Rikaart (who plays Leo on Days of our Lives, and recurs as Kevin, Michael’s brother, on Y&R) and Rebecca Budig (Taylor, The Bold and the Beautiful).

LeBlanc shared how his Y&R family was there for him during his health battle. He explained that he first realized that something was amiss when he was playing Michael.

“After years and years together, people show up and I’m always surprised because it’s work [not family],” LeBlanc told the hosts, who assured their friend that he was truly loved. “I really credit them for that.” Rikaart told his TV half-brother: “We love you.”

For LeBlanc, his cancer diagnosis was, in part, a case of life imitating art as his Michael had gone through prostate cancer on the show. “They did a long, slow pull [out with the camera],” LeBlanc says of when Michael learned he was ill. “It was an actor’s dream.”

With this ring

LeBlanc began having nosebleeds before receiving his official diagnosis, but he initially assumed they had come from taking over-the-counter blood thinners. “They got worse and worse and worse,” he recalls.

The actor was shooting a scene at the Genoa City Athletic Club and had been stuffing his nose with cotton to contain the bleeding. That necessitated him requesting that his scene partner, Zuleyka Silver (Audra), keep a distance so he wouldn’t have to raise his head to see her. “[Everyone] was so patient, so good, but there was something [going on],” LeBlanc recalls. “[People] were much more worried about me than I [was] because I was just playing it off. You don’t think in those terms.”

It wasn’t until LeBlanc had a scene to shoot in which he had to put on Michael’s wedding ring that he realized something deeper may be going on. “I put my hand down and [the ring] fell off my hand,” he says. “That was the first sign of something odd.” Read here to learn how The Young and the Restless star also thanked viewers for noticing something irregular.