James Pickens Jr. has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The longtime Grey’s Anatomy star made this revelation just as his on-screen character faces a similar health scare on the show.
“It’s not the kind of news that anyone wants to hear, but to be honest, prostate cancer runs in my family,” the 73-year-old actor told Black Health Matters.
“My father had it. He had a lot of brothers and some of them had it. I would have been surprised if I didn’t have it.”
“I have a 90-year-old cousin who is still alive and he actually had this disease too. His son has it and several of his brothers have it too. As far as I know, no one has succumbed to it.”
Pickens starred as Dr. Richard Webber for 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) that he had been diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer.
Pickens was diagnosed earlier this year.
“I started having annual health check-ups 34 years ago and started doing PSA tests when I was 41 years old. I am now 73 years old,” he told the outlet.
“The urologist said, ‘That was an advantage for you because you were so diligent about your health. We were able to catch this disease so early because you were getting tested.'”
In January, Pickens discovered he had a tumor in his prostate. But it hadn’t spread any further, so he opted to undergo a prostatectomy, a procedure in which the male prostate gland is surgically removed.
“We discovered it very early on, so they thought that was the best route,” he said.
“I have a rare variant that is rarely seen. They wanted to err on the side of caution and keep an eye on it. They wanted to make sure it was rare enough that it crossed every T and interspersed every I, but they had never seen a variant that was detected as quickly as mine.”
