This year, you were a vocal participant on Tom Joyner's radio show for "Take a Loved One to the Doctor Day," which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has designated the third Tuesday of each September. How important is it for you now that you're in a position of status where you can share your story of prostate cancer and be humbled by your situation and hope that it inspires people?
A lot of people are quiet. A lot of people get diagnosed with different things and they don't want to talk about it. This disease was really about me. That's why I'm sharing it because the knowledge that I had and I learned, I want to share with other men. Prostate cancer is a sneaky one. It doesn't give signs or signals. It just starts attacking slowly and slowly and start going inside you. This is why I tell people we should go get a PSA test. I know we're all just scared to go to the doctor. I know nobody would like to go get the exam. I was basically begging them to go to the doctor. I will continue to be a spokesperson for the prostate cancer foundation because, man, I just want to know if we can find a cure to snap it. Why is it that one in three African-American males will develop prostate cancer when it's one in six Caucasians or any other ethnicity? I want to know why it is one in three African-American men. I know it's our diet and lifestyle. What about the other reasons? And what's the cure? What can we change? There's not enough money. Why is there not enough money for prostate? Breast cancer gets a lot of money for research but they're not giving the Prostate Cancer Foundation enough money for research. They're not giving them enough money and I just want to know why. That's why I support the foundation. We need to continue to raise money to find the cure, man. I thought I was healthy. I played basketball. I'm always on the treadmill every morning and lifting weights and whatever, trying to eat the best way I can. Then I found out that I was unhealthy. I had this disease. All of this jogging that I was doing – I had no signs that I had this disease. My wife made me go get a PSA test. That's the reason I found out that I had it. This is why we say: "Take a Loved One to the Doctor." Go get a test. Go get a blood test. Go get tested for everything.
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