Longtime NHL head coach Mike Keenan revealed this week that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier this year.
He opened up about it in an interview with NHL.com’s Dan Rosen published on Thursday, saying his recovery is “so far, so good.”
Keenan was diagnosed in May, and underwent a prostate brachytherapy — a procedure that implants seeds into the prostate that gradually release radiation to kill cancer cells — earlier this month and will check in with doctors again in October to determine its effectiveness.
“It’s a positive prognosis because they caught it early and it wasn’t extreme cancer,” said Keenan, who is being treated at Toronto’s Sunnybrook hospital. “It was moderate, and you can have less moderate or more extreme. For example, the procedure I did have, not everyone qualifies for it. If you’re more advanced or you have a more extreme diagnosis than I had, most likely you have to have surgery to remove your prostate.”
Keenan told Rosen he hopes that by discussing his diagnosis and procedure, something he was encouraged to do by his doctors, he can create more awareness of the disease so others may catch it early, too. The “sneaky disease,” as Keenan described it, often goes unnoticed as it doesn’t always show early symptoms — that was the case for the longtime bench boss, who was tested after routine blood tests revealed a drastic increase in his prostate-specific antigen level.
“[Doctors] encouraged me to go public, to use whatever platforms I could to help build awareness because they said men just don’t talk about issues like this as women do,” said Keenan. “I thought about it and I said, ‘If I can turn a negative into a positive, I’d be happy to tell my story.’ That’s why I made the decision to go public, to just try to build awareness and be an advocate of an annual checkup, which is a simple blood test to monitor your prostate or any other health issues you might have.”
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