Radio shock jock Don Imus made public his prostate cancer diagnosis today. As I shared last week, my dad got that same news last summer. Seeing the words “prostate cancer” anywhere, but especially on the news, give me a little zing of anxiety-memory from that period, when my family was consumed with learning the vocabulary of this new challenge in our lives.
It sounds like Imus has a similar situation to my dad’s, thankfully for him (I’m no fan of his work, but I wish him good health). Prostate cancer, when it spreads, spreads to the bones, not the lymph nodes, so the best case scenario is to catch it when it’s confined to the prostate.
Imus’ has not spread, so doctors are calling it “fully treatable.” So Imus’ decision now is to decide which side of the debate over whether–and how–to treat it (since prostate cancer is so slow-growing) he comes down on.
I noticed that the CNN item about this made reference to the 2007 incident in which Imus was fired by CBS after making racially incendiary remarks (click here for a moving Beliefnet essay about why his apologies weren’t enough….) about the Rutgers women’s basketball team.
It raises an interesting question: how do you react when a celebrity that you dislike, or who stands for something you dislike, is stricken with a health concern?
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