Actor Ben Stiller has revealed that he was diagnosed with an ‘aggressive’ prostate cancer two years ago. The actor revealed this in an essay published by Medium on Tuesday. The piece was published following the actor’s appearance on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM show on Tuesday morning where he discussed his diagnosis publicly for the first time. This was done to educate men not to wait until the age of 50 to undergo PSA testing, as suggested by the American Cancer Society.
If he had waited, as the American Cancer Society recommends, until I was 50, Stiller says, “I would not have known I had a growing tumour until two years after I got treated. If he had followed the US Preventive Services Task Force guidelines, I would have never gotten tested at all, and not have known I had cancer until it was way too late to treat successfully.”
Although he acknowledges that the USPSTF is in the process of updating its 2012 recommendation against PSA testing, Stiller writes, “I think men over the age of 40 should have the opportunity to discuss the test with their doctor and learn about it, so they can have the chance to be screened. After that, an informed patient can make responsible choices as to how to proceed.”
“This is a complicated issue, and an evolving one. 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,” he’s quoted as saying.
Stiller also shared that his doctor decided to include the Prostate Specific Antigen test in his bloodwork during an annual physical when he was 46, in a departure from the norm.
Stiller’s PSA levels continued to rise over the next two years, so his internist referred him to a urologist. In June 2014, he learned his tumour was cancerous. “I had a Gleason score of 7 (3+4), which is categorised ‘mid-range aggressive cancer. Surgery was recommended,” he recalled.
Recommended
In between doctor appointments, Stiller says he began hitting Google to learn about his illness and to see who else had it. “John Kerry… Joe Torre … Excellent, both still going strong. Mandy Patinkin… Robert De Niro. They’re vital,” he says were the names he discovered to have been in a similar predicament.
Stiller also shared that the one thing he learned was to not use Google unwisely. “Not to Google ‘people who died of prostate cancer’ immediately after being diagnosed with prostate cancer,” he said.
But he came to realise he was lucky because, thanks to his internist’s decision to do the PSA test, his cancer was caught early enough to treat. Schaeffer performed a robotic-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy and Stiller was able to sidestep radiation and other “over-treatment” that can result in impotence or incontinence.
Three months after the surgery, Stiller’s tests came back cancer-free. Two years later, that’s still the case.