Announcing legend Jim Ross gave us all the great news that Bret Hart’s prostate surgery was a success, and the Hitman is now cancer-free. Now, Bret Hart revealed in his own words the details of what he’s been going through for the past few years. Wait, hold up, years?
Though he officially announced his diagnosis in the middle of February, Hart revealed that his battle with cancer actually started back in 2013. Via WWE.com:
Over the years, I’ve always had regular physicals and exams. At my age, you should be getting checked regularly, and I made a point of doing it. In 2013, I had elevated PSA levels and I had to do a biopsy, and they found cancer in my prostate. They told me then that it was considered a slow growing cancer and they placed me on what they call “active surveillance” and I repeated the PSA test, which is just blood work, and then got another biopsy a bit later on.
In June of 2015, my PSA level had doubled and another biopsy found that the cancer was indeed growing. After a consultation with my doctor, the decision was made to go in for a robotic prostectomy. We set the date for Feb, 10; it wasn’t a rush.
Hart admits that while he didn’t want to make it public so soon, he wanted to use his diagnosis to help break the stigma of talking openly about prostate health, and stressed the importance of early detection:
People were going to find out anyway, is what I really thought, so I might as well do some good and shed some light on the awkwardness of talking about it. I also thought there are a lot of men out there who are going to hear about me. There are a lot of statistics that show that one out of 28 men will die from prostate cancer and one in seven will develop prostate cancer.
There are a lot of men out there who are in the exact same shoes as me. They’re hesitant to even go in and get checked. I just wanted to put myself out there. Up here in Canada, it has resulted in a huge influx of men getting checked. I think it’s an illness that a lot of men are reluctant to talk about, reluctant to go in and get checked. They disregard the statistics and percentages of how likely they are to get prostate cancer. I think it was good when I came out publicly.
It’s not easy to speak openly about something so personal, so we applaud Bret for still trying to do some good while going through such a difficult period in his life. So hey, listen to the Hitman: if you’ve got the parts, get ’em checked out!
