CA journalist warns, prostate cancer ‘can happen to you’

By Anissa Durham, Special for CalMatters

This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Guest Commentary written by

The night he found out, Jerry McCormick was alone in a Las Vegas hotel room. It was the start of a weekend trip to see Janet Jackson in concert. But before heading out, he checked his email. A message from LabCorp was in his inbox: Biopsy results. 

“I was looking at the results, and I was like, Oh my God,” McCormick said. He didn’t call anyone. He didn’t tell anyone. He spent the next seven hours going down a Google rabbit hole on all things prostate cancer.

The next morning, he broke the news to his husband, Richard, whose response was immediate: ‘We’re going to beat this.’

In the weeks that followed, McCormick told close friends and family. “When people hear cancer, they’re like ‘ohhhhhh’ — you know, that pity thing. But I don’t want to be pitied,” he said. While some were at a loss for words, others immediately offered encouragement. His sister, who lost her husband to a different kind of cancer in 2024, took it hard. 

But McCormick repeated one short phrase to himself: “I will be OK.”

In the meantime, McCormick joined Facebook support groups, started writing on Substack and faced the reality he was fighting for his life. The longtime San Diego journalist, college professor and student mentor coped the best way he knew — by telling his story. 

“It’s the quiet moments that sneak up on you,” he said. “I tend to stay pretty busy, but then when I get in bed at night, since the diagnosis, I think about this every day. Like, I have prostate cancer. What am I going to do? It’s scary and surreal at the same time.”  

Cancer is one of the most frightening words a doctor can say. One in eight Black men will develop prostate cancer, compared to 1 in 12 white men, said Dr. Brent Rose, associate professor of radiation oncology at the University of California, San Diego. 

Black men are more likely to be diagnosed at younger ages, so the American Cancer Society recommends they begin prostate cancer screenings at age 45. 

Since turning 50, McCormick has gotten an annual prostate exam. Last summer, he found himself getting up to urinate six or seven times a night. Within weeks of his first doctor’s visit, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. For the 57-year-old, it came as a shock — no one in his family had dealt with it.

The most widely known way to check for prostate cancer is a digital rectal exam. But Dr. Rose said that’s not as effective as a prostate-specific antigen blood test. Recent guidelines from the American Urological Association recommend the PSA as the first screening test and, if necessary, a digital rectal exam.

“A lot of guys think of the digital rectal exam and start to get worried about it … We don’t want that to be a barrier for cancer screening,” Dr. Rose said. “Digital rectal exams are not recommended.” 

Prostate cancer is disproportionately deadly for Black men because they’re diagnosed at later stages, often when treatment options narrow. Dr. Rose has a few theories why they are twice as likely to die from this largely preventable disease: less access to care, genetics and social determinants of health, like racism and poverty.

In September, McCormick went for a biopsy. Half the tissue samples came back cancerous. Doctors gave him two options: radiation or prostate cancer removal surgery. The former requires daily treatment for multiple weeks. The latter is, typically, a one-time procedure. 

McCormick had just started a new job and didn’t want to be out of the office for weeks. Surgery carried risks, including infertility, but as a gay man, he didn’t plan to have kids. He opted for surgery. 

Even so, he worried about how his decision would affect his husband. The two have been together 23 years. According to the American Cancer Society, it’s common for men who’ve undergone treatment for prostate cancer — such as surgery, radiation or hormone therapy — to experience some form of erectile dysfunction. 

On Dec. 4, McCormick awoke without pain and assumed his prostate cancer surgery was over. While he waited to speak to the surgeon, his mind raced. How did the surgery go?

The surgeon entered the room and delivered bad news. His abdominal wall was too thick to penetrate, and she had to reschedule his surgery. The realization came only after they had made three small incisions on his lower abdomen. 

“It was an emotional rollercoaster,” McCormick said. Then the anesthesia wore off and the incision pain hit.   

On the bright side, McCormick was able to celebrate Christmas and the New Year at home with loved ones. His new surgery date was Jan. 6. 

But days before his procedure, and at the height of flu season, McCormick got sick. The surgeon told him if he’s not better soon, they’d have to reschedule surgery again. 

Eventually his cough went away, and doctors cleared him. The night before, McCormick was instructed to prepare with a dose of laxatives at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., no food after midnight and use an antibacterial wash the morning of surgery.

This time when he awoke from surgery, the doctors said everything went well. After weeks of mental preparation, prayers and words of empowerment, it seemed things were starting to look up. 

The doctor said the procedure involved a bigger incision than the first attempt. With an IV drip of OxyContin and valium, the pain was manageable. Two days later, doctors gave him the green light to go home. 

“I couldn’t laugh, talk or breathe,” he said. “It was painful.”  

On Jan. 12, he ended up in the emergency room and was later admitted to the hospital. One of his incisions was infected. 

Recovery, McCormick said, has been anything but linear. He’s grieving the life he had before prostate cancer. But documenting his experience has given him a new purpose.
“I promised myself that I would use this experience to educate people,” he said. “If I know something, I want other people to know it. I don’t want them to get the sanitized version” of having prostate cancer. 

“It’s scary,” he said. “Some days I’m super angry. Other days I’m like, I got this.” 

He’s quick to remind other Black men: this can happen to you, too, and prostate cancer is treatable, especially if it’s caught early. 

It’ll be a few weeks before McCormick learns if his cancer is gone.

This commentary was adapted from an article produced for Word in Black. It accompanies an article about the disproportionate prevalence of prostate cancer among Black Californians.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.