James Pickens Jr. has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The longtime “Grey’s Anatomy” star made the reveal, just as his onscreen character is dealing with a similar health scare on the show.
“It’s not the kind of news anyone wants to hear, but to be honest, prostate cancer has run through my family,” the 73-year-old actor told Black Health Matters.
“My father had it. He had a lot of brothers; several of them had it. I would have been surprised if I hadn’t gotten it.”
He continued, “I’ve got a 90-year-old first cousin, who’s still alive, actually, [and] he had it. His son has it, a couple of his brothers had it. No one, as far as I know, has succumbed to it.”
Pickens has starred as Dr. Richard Webber in all 22 seasons of the ABC series. At the end of Thursday’s fall finale episode, Richard told Dr. Miranda Bailey (played by Chandra Wilson) he was diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer.
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Pickens was diagnosed earlier this year.
“I started getting my annual physical 34 years ago, and I started my PSA testing when I was 41. I’m 73 now,” he told the outlet.
“My urologist said, ‘Because you were so diligent in that piece of your health, it was to your advantage. We were able to catch it so early because you were being tested.’”
In January, Pickens discovered he had a tumor on his prostate. However, it hadn’t spread further yet, so he opted to undergo a prostatectomy — a procedure in which a man’s prostate gland is surgically removed.
“We caught it really early, and so they thought that would be the best route to take,” he said.
“I do have a rare variant that you don’t see very often. They wanted to err on the side of caution and keep an eye on it. It was rare enough that they wanted to make sure that they were crossing all the T’s and dotting all their I’s, but they hadn’t seen one that was detected as early as mine.”
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