By Dianne Anderson

It takes a good strong woman to drag a man down to the doctor’s office, usually kicking and screaming, at the thought of their annual prostate exam.

But a lot of times, health advocate Michael Lexion sees men in his sessions who wonder why the women are allowed in the room at all – let alone getting in on the taboo discussions.

“I say, do you have a woman? There’s nothing to be ashamed of. There are women with breast cancer, and men are out there [involved]. You should be able to talk about it,” said Lexion, a long time prostate cancer survivor.

Lexion’s own bout with prostate cancer was localized and caught early on, and he has made it his mission to spread the word on early testing. Ignoring it is never a good idea because cancer grows, and over time, left unchecked can spread to other areas of the body.

“Mine was so early, stage one. That’s at the beginning, but it would have grown into cancer,” he said.

What worries him most now is how the pandemic slowed checkups, but prostate cancer is not slowing down. Black men are not coming to talk about prostate cancer issues, which doesn’t mean they don’t have it.

They just don’t know they have it.

“It’s really quiet. Normally I would get a couple of men a year with cancer that would come to me. I would give information and share treatments that I know work, depending on what stage they’re in,” he said.

Black men are more likely to get and die from prostate cancer.

He said there is no time to wait on the testing.

“The longer men don’t get checked, it starts moving to the 2nd or 3rd stage. If they don’t get treatment and they’re eating all the bad things, it gets really aggressive,” he said. “Underlying health conditions add to the fire.”

Lexion said they should also get a second opinion about treatment options. Depending on their health condition overall, different cancers grow at different rates.

Several therapies are available, proton therapy among them. It is effective and very costly. One of his friends went to a top ranked local hospital system, but his insurance didn’t cover the treatment. His friend worked out a scholarship with the hospital and he was able to receive it.

September is prostate cancer awareness month, but Lexion said the annual event is set tentatively for early October. He is inviting Black men to contact him to find out about life saving tests and treatment.

Last year, top experts participated in his annual event, including a doctor, a nurse practitioner and his health education partner, Erlinda Patterson.

Patterson, retired from Kaiser as a health education specialist, continues to reach the community on prostate cancer awareness, as well as other cancers. Her husband John is a colon cancer survivor and she recalls sneaking vitamins in his ice cream smoothie when he was a picky patient going through chemotherapy.

Having worked in urology for over two decades, she has seen countless prostate cases, and said the Digital Rectal Exam DRE is critical for a true diagnosis. The PSA test is a good start, but she said it can pull back false negatives.

She believes it should be used in combination with the DRE.

“The doctor can definitely tell by feeling,” she said. “You can’t just do the PSA test alone.”

She advocates that women get involved as advocates, as wives and family members, in getting men checked. In working with prostate health awareness at her church, she finds that men won’t easily talk about it, which destroys relationships.

Rehabilitation is something many doctors don’t address, but couples need to know what happens after surgery.

Patterson has promoted awareness on television for Kaiser, interviewing doctors, medical professionals and prostate cancer survivors. She said couples need real talk during and after prostate treatment because women often mistake their husband’s lack of interest with the idea that they have another woman on the side.

“I’ve seen a couple of marriages fall apart. One woman spoke about how difficult it was. I understand when men think that women don’t want them anymore, but they won’t talk about it. Now, the couple is so happy together,” she said.

Patterson emphasized the main thing is to get the man to the appointment, even if it means making the appointment.

“I’d rather have you alive,” she said.

In 2021, a University of Washington School of Medicine study showed that Black men in the U.S. were about 60% to 80% more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, and twice as likely to die from it compared to men of other races in the U.S.

They recommend that Black men start prostate cancer screening at age 45.

“The study provides us evidence to support a personalized screening recommendation for Black men, who are more likely to be diagnosed at younger ages and with more aggressive disease,” said Dr. Yaw Nyame, a urologic oncologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

The findings show that screening at age 45 and testing every year until age 70 decreased deaths from prostate cancer compared to current screening practices without increasing the number of over-detected prostate cancer cases. Screening within that age range decreased the likelihood of dying by about 30 percent compared with no screening.

In another UW study, Nyame and researchers found that Black men were less likely to have surgery at larger cancer centers, which they say may contribute to an almost two-fold higher death rate for Black men than their peers.

“We had a hypothesis that structural factors such systemic racism likely led Black men to access lower quality surgical care and that this might be a contributing factor” to the higher death rate experienced by Black men, said Dr. Nyame, a UW Medicine urologist and lead author of the study.

For more information on the upcoming prostate cancer awareness event and other resources,

email mglexion@msn.com

To see the prostate cancer study https://bit.ly/3qWmo3N

For more information on Prostate Cancer, and risk for Black men, see

https://www.pcf.org/knowyourrisk/