Tony’s Story: Advocating for himself and others

[Tony] I walk in, I'm sitting there, she's at her desk.

She says, “I got good news and bad news.”

She said, “The bad news is you have cancer.”

Let us pray. Our God, my father we’re so thankful and grateful. She said, “The good news is, there’s a good chance that we caught it early."

And I thought about it and I said, “Oh, okay. Well, this is good. This is good.”

And then I got that look, she's like, “Good?” It's like, “Yeah, now I get to talk about what I am experiencing. Hopefully I can help some people.”

For me, I decided on the course of the treatment for prostate cancer. And nine years later, the prostate cancer is still in remission.

That's one of those things where you have to advocate for yourself.

There are a lot of men out there that don't even know what a prostate is.

Having been in the medical field in the military, I really understand a lot of medical terminology and things that relate to the body.

I got to thinking how many men would be okay doing research and trying to figure out all of the doctors speak.

And so I dove in, I tried to learn as much as I could and put myself in a position to be available to talk to men. I started a support group that was for newly diagnosed.

Started making a trip to Washington, DC to the Zero Summit.

Had I not been going to those summits, and had the ability to talk to someone about that, I probably still would have been suffering in silence.

Give me a smile. You know it would make me happy, don’t it? It's a difficult fight to fight.

And if it was not for my family, it would be probably easy for me to give up.

My wife showed me what it meant when it says for better or for worse.

And there were times when I would say to her, “I can't believe you’re still here.”

So now, now we get into the real deal.

[Tammie] Even though people call you a superwoman, you still need a support system.

And I remember, um, in the hospital one day, I'm in the cafeteria crying by myself because I didn't know what was going to happen.

I'm sorry. I'm just glad he’s here. And so I needed to do what I could to make sure that he stayed here.

[Tony] I know that, uh, none of us come to stay forever and I want to make sure that I've done everything that I can do as it relates to prostate cancer.

Thus, I aspire to inspire before I expire. That's why I'm here. That's my purpose.