In 2015, John Tesh, diagnosed with a rare form of prostate cancer, was told he had 18 months to live. But until Tuesday, the former co-host of “Entertainment Tonight,” had kept his grueling cancer battle quiet.
In a teary interview that was also a reunion with his former cohost Mary Hart (Tesh left the show in 1996, Hart in 2011), he told his friend that “the diagnosis was dire. … I [felt] paralyzed.”
Read MoreView this post on InstagramTesh, now in remission — and whose new memoir detailing his journey, “Relentless: Unleashing a Life of Purpose, Grit, and Faith,” is just out from HarperCollins — opened up about his diagnosis and the path it put him on.
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“I was in so much agony and I'd just had enough,” he elaborated in the first half of the interview (the second half airs Wednesday night), describing a low point in his hospitalization when a nurse inserted a nasogastric tube. “And then you're feeling sorry for yourself and you go into chemo and next to you is a kid who has six more lines in their arms than you do who's 8 years old. And then you start feeling guilty.”
His wife of 28 years, Connie Selleca, he said, helped him pull through, and get back a positive attitude.
John Tesh’s Cancer Journey
Tesh, a pianist and pop music composer, had surgery in the summer of 2015, followed by chemo and radiation, according to The New York Post. The cancer remained in remission until 2017, when he had laparoscopic surgery.
“I became a cancer patient. I came apart at the seams,” he told the paper. “But Connie is a real ‘Snap out of it!’ girl, like Cher in ‘Moonstruck,’ and we dug into a lot of research and read a lot of books. … What's really sad is that, once you've entered this world, you learn that a lot of spouses have split up. … I told [my doctors] that if couples want to have that conversation with us, we will and we've done this many times, telling them how we got through it.”
Screening for Prostate Cancer
The test for prostate cancer — a digital rectal exam – isn’t a favorite among men. But, as Dr. Edwin Posadas, a urologic oncologist and director of the Translational Oncology Program and medical Director at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, explained to SurvivorNet, it lasts only some 30 seconds, and the potentially life-saving information gained makes it worth it.
"They're inexpensive, relatively noninvasive," Dr. Posadas said about digital rectal exams, which usually go hand-in-hand with a blood test called a "PSA" test, which measures levels of something called "prostate-specific antigen."
"No man is really excited about having a rectal examination, which means that a doctor has to literally touch the prostate gland through the rectum, [but] honestly, it takes less than 30 seconds to get it done," Dr. Posadas said. "It's relatively painless.”
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