ByBruce Y. Lee,
Senior Contributor.
Here’s a PSA about PSA—meaning a public service announcement about prostate specific antigen. Although checking the PSA levels in your blood is a routine way of screening for prostate cancer, just because such levels are within normal limits doesn’t completely rule out the possibility of having prostate cancer.
Musician and former Entertainment Tonight host John Tesh learned this back in 2015 when he was diagnosed with a rare form of prostate cancer that doesn’t produce PSA and told that he might have just 18 months to live. That began a rocky journey for the composer of what was NBC’s iconic NBA theme song throughout the 1990s “Roundball Rock.” But Test eventually found some rocks—his wife actress Connie Selleca, his doctors at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer and his faith—to help him get well past those 18-months to where he is now, one decade later.
Currently 73 years of age, Tesh was 63 years of age ten years ago back in 2015 because that’s how time and math work. His busy life as a touring musician and radio host as well helping handle his wife’s mother’s health issues had delayed his routine annual physical exam for about half a year. “My PSA was like 0.4 for five years, which meant that there was nothing going on when you look at the typical history of anybody’s history,” Tesh recalled. “But the doctor did a digital rectal exam, and he said, whoa, wait a second, there’s something going on." Eventually imaging and a biopsy put more than a finger on what’s going on as he had stage III prostate cancer that the urologist in the Los Angeles area deemed inoperable. That’s when Tesh got the whole 18-months-to-live prognosis from his doctor.
