Ben Stiller, Zoolaner actor, admitted to being diagnosed with an 'aggressive' type prostate cancer two years ago and kept it away from the public until now.
"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" star, 48, said in an interview about his life-changing battle with having cancer on Howard Stern Show.
In June 2014, Stiller was diagnosed with "aggressive" form of cancer in the prostate as his doctors' relayed the news. Two months later, he decided to go under the knife and had his prostate removed and on the same year, he was cleared from cancer.
Entertainment.ie reports, "It came out of the blue for me. I had no idea," Stiller explained. "At first, I didn't know what was gonna happen. I was scared. It just stopped everything in your life because you can't plan for a movie because you don't know what's gonna happen."
His tumor had been continuosly developing for five years without him knowing, as reported by Daily Mail. It would have been detected early with a single PSA test which Stiller was not even aware of.
Ben Stiller took to Twitter to publicize his conquered ordeal and urging everyone to get tested. The post goes, 'So, I had cancer a couple of years ago and I wanted to talk about it. And the test that saved my life,' Daily Mail added.
Upon hearing the news, Stiller reached out to Robert De Niro, who overcome the same disease a few years back. 'As I learned more about my disease (one of the key learnings is not to Google 'people who died of prostate cancer' immediately after being diagnosed with prostate cancer), I was able to wrap my head around the fact that I was incredibly fortunate,' he wrote.
He added, 'I got diagnosed with prostate cancer Friday, June 13th, 2014. On September 17th of that year I got a test back telling me I was cancer free. The three months in between were a crazy roller coaster ride with which about 180,000 men a year in America can identify.'
Letting the public know about its importance, he wrote with a sign of relief, 'Taking the PSA test saved my life. Literally. That's why I am writing this now.'
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