In Memory of Andy Whitfield, Spartacus, The STARZ Original Series. (Geordon named his first Bearded Dragon, Spartacus, after Andy) In March 2010 doctors found out why. The then-38-year-old Whitfield had cancer, specifically stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma. After a relatively mild round of chemotherapy, by September he felt healthy enough to return to the New Zealand set for season two. That’s when a routine checkup for insurance discovered that the cancer had returned. This time nothing would go easily. Without an aggressive and debilitating chemotherapy regimen, the married father of two small children would have three to six months left to live.It was then that Whitfield and his wife Vashti decided to document his second cancer battle, inviting film crews and training digital cameras on themselves for more than a year, until shortly before he died at age 39 in September 2011.