According to sources with Yahoo.com, actor Val Kilmer has unveiled the nature recent cancer treatment that put his career on pause in a new highly detailed interview, prior to the events of the global COVID-19 pandemic in which a tracheostomy inhibited the actor’s ability to speak.

“He can still squeeze air up through his windpipe however,” said journalist Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “and past the hole that was cut into his throat and the tracheostomy tube, in a way that makes him somewhat understood — not very, but somewhat.”

The interview described the tracheostomy as, “an opening created at the front of the neck so a tube can be inserted into the windpipe (trachea) to help you breathe.”

The interview also delved into Kilmer’s diagnosis of throat cancer which was confirmed in 2014 after discovering a cyst in a throat that prevented the actor from properly swallowing while performing his Mark Twain stage show, Citizen Twain. He added that on a few occasions he “had woken up in a pool of his own blood a time or two” before seeking treatment.

A long time follower of Christian Science, the actor worked with a practitioner to “pray his fear away so that his body would no longer manifest outwardly what can be diagnosed as a malady” in addition to traditional medical treatment at hospitals.

Kilmer confirmed that he is now cancer-free and that he is currently set to appear in five movies including the long-awaited sequel to the 1986 fighter pilot thriller, Top Gun: Maverick.