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I knew getting prostate cancer at 48 would change me. I had no idea how much
Podcast episode summaries
What is the prostate?
Behind the Prostate Cancer Foundation
Prostate cancer in Black men
Stephen Fry: A man willing to talk about it
Masculinity and prostate cancer
Men who had prostate cancer
Prostate cancer: a reading list
A who’s who of podcast guests
“Men who had prostate cancer.”
That’s what Ben Stiller says he Googled immediately after being diagnosed with the disease. I did the same thing.
Other than my father, I knew of only one person who’d been treated for prostate cancer, and that was Frank Zappa, the iconoclastic guitarist/bandleader whose deeply weird records my brother used to play.
Zappa was just 52 when he succumbed to prostate cancer in 1993, and I remember thinking, What the hell!
That was it. Not only did I know nothing about the disease or its treatment, I couldn’t name anyone who had it. I quickly learned there are plenty of well-known men who’ve suffered and/or died from the disease and — prostate cancer being prostate cancer — mostly did so in silence.
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A partial list of prominent men who have been treated for the disease includes actors Robert De Niro, Mandy Patinkin, Ian McKellen, and Ryan O’Neal; politicians John Kerry and Jerry Brown; former secretary of state Colin Powell; singer Harry Belafonte; bassist Phil Lesh; and former baseball players Joe Torre and Ken Griffey Sr.
Notable men who’ve died from prostate cancer include actors Dennis Hopper, Gary Cooper, Jerry Orbach, Telly Savalas, and Bill Bixby; guitarist Johnny Ramone; poet Langston Hughes; psychologist Timothy Leary; activist Stokely Carmichael; former president of France François Mitterrand; baseball player Ty Cobb; and talk show host Merv Griffin.
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarkAShanahan.