Colbert's prostate cancer message rings true
Posted: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 12:05 PM
Jim Colbert was on the line the other day to talk about a subject most men have no interest in discussing – or even thinking about. It’s prostate cancer, and Colbert has been talking about it for 13 years, ever since his friend on the Senior PGA Tour, Arnold Palmer, was diagnosed with the disease and made Colbert promise to get checked himself.
Colbert was 55 back in 1996 when he underwent a simple blood test called a PSA. (Prostate-Specific Antigen.) His number was 4, a borderline figure for a man his age. His doctor ordered a biopsy.
“The next morning he said, ‘You got it,’ ” Colbert said.
Colbert elected to have the prostate removed by a top surgeon in San Diego who happened to belong to the same golf club as Colbert. He’s happy to report he’s in great shape 13 years later and still playing golf and enjoying life.
Colbert was one of the fittest players on the Senior Tour. He had no symptoms of prostate cancer. If he had waited for symptoms to show – usually difficulty urinating and symptoms also associated with an enlarged prostate – his outcome might have been different.
So ever since then, Colbert has been campaigning with Palmer and raising millions of dollars to fight a cancer that affects one in every six American men. Nearly 200,000 new cases are documented every year, with nearly 30,000 deaths.
If caught early, as Colbert’s was, it’s one of the most treatable forms of cancer with a cure rate of better than 90 percent. If caught late, it’s a killer. The trouble is that it involves the male reproductive tract, and that’s something men don’t like to talk about.
That, Colbert said, is the biggest difference between how women approach breast cancer and men approach prostate cancer.
“The women will talk about everything, but the men are in the closet,” he said, adding that other guys would ask him about his knee surgery, but not about his prostate surgery.
Colbert is one of three athletes who have battled prostate cancer who have teamed up with Kimberly Clark, the manufacturer of Depend undergarments for incontinence, to wage a four-month public-awareness campaign. The other three are former baseball star Ken Griffey, Sr., Pro Football Hall of Famer Len Dawson and World Boxing Hall of Fame referee Joe Cortez. The campaign is called the Depend Campaing to End Prostate Cancer, and the non-profit he is working with is called ZERO - The Project to End Prostate Cancer.
Depend (Depend.com) is sponsoring the campaign because – and here’s one of those things men don’t want to talk about – most men have to deal with some incontinence after cancer treatment.
I’ll vouch for that. In 1997, I had my prostate out after being diagnosed with cancer. One of the things my surgeon told me is that besides manufacturing semen, the prostate acts as a second valve in the male urinary tract. When it’s removed, you’re left with just a sphincter valve at the bladder – the same system that women have to deal with. Until that other valve is strengthened, you’re going to have some leakage. Usually, at least in early-stage cases, it’s not permanent.
The good news is that modern surgical methods allow a skilled surgeon to preserve the nerves that circle the outside of the prostate on their way to a man’s favorite organ. So at the end of the day, the hydraulics should still work. You’ll still have orgasms. It’s just that nothing comes out. There are worse things to deal with in life – many of them.
I say all this because guys need to know what’s involved. They also need to know that if they don’t get at least a PSA test – no fingers in orifices involved – and they don’t catch prostate cancer early enough, the likelihood of everything still functioning is less.
The older you get, the more likely you are to contract prostate cancer. I’ve been told that 90 percent of 90-year-old men have some form of it. It’s rare in young men, but it has been diagnosed in men in the 20s. By age 40, you definitely should get an annual blood test.
Colbert said he hears from a lot of people after they get the disease and while they’re trying to decide on a treatment.
“There’s a quite a few of the seniors who have had this,” he said. “They want to know about incontinence and can you perform sexually. The answer is yes, and there are a lot of solutions to both of them.
“The PSA is a simple little blood test. If you’re not going to get a physical, you can get a simple blood test,” he said.
I second that advice.
