Ben Stiller was suspected with prostate cancer when he was 48 during an annual physical given to him by his doctor. "It came out of the blue for me," Stiller said. "I had no idea."
His family doesn't have prostate cancer history or he has any symptoms, but his doctor suspected the cancer due to a Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test - a simple blood test which is part of his physical.
At first he wasn't immediately concerned, the doctor however re-administered the examination 6 months later to find that the PSA had gone up even more. "After the second time, I started to get a little worried," Stiller said.
The actor went through a series of other test to confirm if he definitely has cancer, which he did.
"As my new, world-altering doctor spoke about cell cores and Gleason scores, probabilities of survival, incontinence and impotence, why surgery would be good and what kind would make the most sense, his voice literally faded out like every movie or TV show about a guy being told he had cancer... a classic Walter White moment, except I was me, and no one was filming anything at all," Stiller explains in an essay about his diagnosis for Medium.
Once the diagnosis was made, Stiller had to wait six weeks for his body to heal from the biopsy to have surgery to remove his prostate.
"I was diagnosed on Friday the 13th, and then I had until August 23rd to get ready for the surgery. So I just had the summer to hang out and think about it," he said.
After his surgery, another PSA test was given to make sure things were going in the right direction - and they were.
The actor said he wants to open up about his experience now in order to help others.
Stiller added, "I wanted to talk about it because of the test, because I feel like the test saved my life."
He continues, "But without this PSA test itself, or any screening procedure at all, how are doctors going to detect asymptomatic cases like mine, before the cancer has spread and metastasized throughout one's body rendering it incurable? Or what about the men who are most at risk, those of African ancestry, and men who have a history of prostate cancer in their family? Should we, as the USPSTF suggests, not screen them at all?"
Stiller credits the test with saving his life and wants others to have a conversation about the test with their doctors.
"This is a complicated issue, and an evolving one," he concludes his essay. "But in this imperfect world, I believe the best way to determine a course of action for the most treatable, yet deadly cancer, is to detect it early."
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