httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNNADvsy75A
Though best known for his ability to make audiences laugh, actor, writer and director Ben Stiller is hoping his latest effort will make people stop and think.
Stiller published an essay Tuesday morning revealing that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in June 2014.
“The three months in between were a crazy roller coaster ride with which about 180,000 men a year in America can identify,” Stiller wrote of the time.
The publication of the essay was released in connection with Stiller’s appearance on “The Howard Stern Show” w he first spoke of his diagnosis.
He hopes to raise awareness of the threat of prostate cancer and also to advocate for early testing, something that Stiller credits with saving his life.
In Stiller’s case, his PSA value was checked by a doctor in 2012, when he was 46.
When checked again in 2014, the value was raised and he was referred to a urologist, who upon further testing found Stiller’s cancer.
“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?” Stiller argued in his essay.