The name Griffey is known to baseball fans, with an All Star father and a Hall of Fame son, but people may not know how prostate cancer has impacted the Griffey family.
“Black men don’t talk about prostate cancer,” Ken Griffey Sr. told the St. Louis Prostate Cancer Coalition at a public event at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel on Thursday, January 12.
Griffey had four uncles who died from prostate cancer. His late mother, Ruth Griffey, saw her brothers succumb to the disease, and she made sure that her five sons knew the importance of early and regular testing. Griffey said his mother’s encouragement saved his life.
Griffey said he started taking the PSA test in his mid-30s while he was still playing professional baseball. When he stopped playing ball at age 41 and started coaching, he continued getting a PSA test with his annual physical. After taking a PSA test at age 55, he was told he had prostate cancer. Fortunately, his was slow-growing and he had robotic surgery to remove it.
“It was found early enough that I didn’t have to have radiation or chemotherapy,” he said. He has now been without prostate cancer for almost 12 years. He still gets his PSA checked each year.
It was only after his own experience with the disease that some of his longtime golf buddies spoke up about their own prostate cancer surgeries.
“They had the radical prostate cancer surgery, and they would never talk about it until they found out that I had prostate cancer – and I had been playing golf with them for years,” he said.
Just a few months ago, Griffey said his younger brother Freddie was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer and is doing fine now.
“He at least had somebody to talk to,” Griffey said, “because I went through everything he was getting ready to go through.”
The sibling prostate cancer survivors speak to one another every day. Griffey said he has two older brothers “who are harder to convince” but are both going to the doctor now and “taking care of themselves a lot better.”
Through the pharmaceutical and agriculture company Bayer, Griffey is part of the Men Who Speak Up project, a national movement to raise awareness about prostate cancer.
The St. Louis Prostate Cancer Coalition is comprised of health care providers from Siteman Cancer Center, community advocates and survivors. The coalition supports the continued and early use of the PSA test, particularly for African-American men, because of the heavy prevalence of the disease. In the St. Louis region, African-American men are 2.3 times more likely to die from prostate cancer than any other racial group, according to the coalition.
Siteman radiation oncologist Dr. Lannis Hall said there is controversy about PSA screening because of the results of poorly conducted studies that had little to no participation of African-American men. The coalition wants to make clear the importance of talking to your doctor and getting screened, because early detection saves lives.
“Prostate cancer is highly curable if detected early, but only 30 percent of men survive five years if detected after it’s spread to other organs,” Dr. Hall told The American. “Unfortunately, there are no early symptoms, so this simple blood test is a good step in evaluating prostate health.”
As for the All-Star’s Hall of Fame son, Griffey said Ken Griffey Jr. gets screened.
“I stay on him and my young son Craig, and I make sure that they talk to each other,” Griffey said. After every annual physical, he said, he always asks, “Did you get the PSA?”
For more information, visit http://prostatecancercoalitionstl.org.
