Zoolander actor Ben Stiller has revealed he was diagnosed with prostate cancer two years ago.
Stiller, 50, made the shock revelation while appearing on the Howard Stern Show.
‘At first, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was scared … It came out of the blue for me,’ he told host.
Now cancer free, Stiller says he is lucky his doctor found it early, using the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test.
‘The PSA test is the only early screener for prostate cancer and, right now, the United States Preventative Services Task Force does not recommend to take the test,’ he said.
In an essay titled The Prostate Cancer Test That Saved My Life published on Medium, Stiller says he didn’t have any symptoms.
‘I was lucky enough to have a doctor who gave me what they call a “baseline” PSA test when I was about 46. I have no history of prostate cancer in my family and I am not in the high-risk group, being neither — to the best of my knowledge — of African or Scandinavian ancestry. I had no symptoms,’ he wrote.
‘If he had waited, as the American Cancer Society recommends, until I was 50, I would not have known I had a growing tumor until two years after I got treated.’
The actor is now committed to raising awareness about the PSA test.
‘This thing saved my life, I gotta say something.’
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