Hollywood comedian Ben Stiller has revealed he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2014.
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In an emotional essay on Medium, the star of Zoolander and Something About Mary reveals the moment his doctor broke the news to him.
“My urologist segued from talking about how inconvenient it was picking his daughter up at school that morning to dropping a cancer diagnosis on me without missing a beat. Two weeks earlier, I didn’t even have an urologist,” he writes.
Stiller, who is married to actress Christine Taylor and is a father of two, says he was diagnosed on June 13, 2014 and by September he was cancer-free after surgery, calling the three months in between a “roller coaster ride”.
“As I learned more about my disease (one of the key learnings is not to Google “people who died of prostate cancer” immediately after being diagnosed with prostate cancer), I was able to wrap my head around the fact that I was incredibly fortunate,” he penned. “Fortunate because my cancer was detected early enough to treat. And also because my internist gave me a test he didn’t have to.”
The 50-year-old credits his PSA, or the prostate-specific antigen test, with saving his life and detecting the disease early enough to be successfully treated.
The test is controversial. Some experts believe it can do as much harm as good. PSA tests are imprecise, and they can lead to unnecessary treatment of nonlethal cancers. But PSA tests can be a useful early indicator of prostate cancer.
In New Zealand, 3,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year.
For more information about prostate cancer and treatment in New Zealand visit prostate.org.nz.
