Belafonte addresses cancer survivors at North Shore-LIJ

Richard Tedesco

Harry Belfafonte delivered a powerful message of hope as the featured speaker at the Cancer Survivors Day Celebration outside the North Shore-LIJ Monter Cancer Center last Saturday afternoon.

Belafonte, a legendary entertainer, social activist and international humanitarian, addressed the 2,700 cancer survivors gathered in a large tent erected for the outdoor celebration as a survivor of prostate cancer.

“If you are diagnosed with prostate cancer, it’s not a death sentence,” he said. “What makes a difference is how you conduct your life.”

The New York native recounted how the detection of an elevated prostate specific antigen count during his annual physical several years ago led to three biopsies and the determination that he had prostate cancer. 

After the initial shock, he consulted close friends, including actors Sidney Poitier and Brock Peters and discovered he was not alone.

“So many of us had been touched by this experience and were trying to deal with it,” Belafonte said. “I looked at the odds of all the things I was told…for me, going through the surgical process carried the greatest odds.”

He recounted how he then had to deal with issues tied to his masculinity. And he said Peters, who opted to not have surgery, ultimately died from the disease.

For himself, Belafonte decided to use his celebrity as a platform to deliver a message about the need for early detection to combat the disease.

“I always thought that art is not just the singing of song or the painting of pictures. But it’s also to inspire. My mentor Paul Robeson once said to me, ‘Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. They are civilization’s radical voice. What we do with that voice is to instruct, to inspire’,” Belafonte said.

He said he was particularly concerned about how the disease affected African-American men who, he said, resisted the simplest detection examination for social reasons related to homophobia.

Belafonte said he was speaking at the Abbysinian Baptist Church in Harlem explaining the procedure a doctor would follow of inserting a finger in the anus for several seconds to determine the size and condition of the prostate gland.

“I felt I wasn’t reaching them as passionately as I could until I said, you know, through all the examinations, not one doctor, not one male nurse, has ever asked me for my phone number,” he said, drawing laughter from the fellow cancer survivors gathered for the event. “Something as simple as that put that in perspective.”

Belafonte said coping with cancer is essentially a matter of perspective.

“All of us here have to put this experience in perspective, not just for our own survival but the survival of our loved ones,” he said. “Men are not affected in our narrow space. How we handle our experience of cancer has a huge impact on what the family does.”

After Belafonte spoke, North Shore-LIJ Chairman Richard Goldstein presented him with a special white lab coat, embroidered with his name making him an honorary member of the North Shore-LIJ faculty.

Earlier in the program, two local cancer survivors spoke about their personal battles in dealing with the disease. Seth Luker of Merrick spoke about how he overcame cancer twice, surviving colon and liver cancer, and Monica Melville, an oncology nurse from Queens, told about surviving breast cancer and how important support groups and learning from other survivors was in her recovery.

“Today is about us survivors,” Melville said. “Remember we are cancer survivors and we are amazing.”

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