But in January of 2010, Larry Coleman knew he wasn’t in a routine game of phone tag when the voice he heard on the recording belonged to the doctor himself.
“I often wondered how I would feel or respond” to a diagnosis of cancer, said the founding pastor of Springfield’s Restored Life Ministries, who will be the survivor speaker at Sisters United’s 11th Annual Awareness Fashion Show and Luncheon at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at the Clark County Champions Center.
His response turned out to be a brief moment of anxiety when he heard the diagnosis and a second “as I shared with my wife (Evon) what was going on.”
That moment of sharing was one of particular vulnerability because Coleman had prostate cancer, which like breast cancer, poses a cruelly intimate kind of threat.
Coupled with his religious calling, that threat seems to underscore the root meaning of the word when Coleman calls describes his wife’s reassurances a “godsend.”
“My wife is very spiritual as well,” Coleman said, and “I knew that the Lord was speaking to me through her.”
It’s not that Coleman doesn’t treasure the support he received from friend and fellow pastor and prostate cancer survivor Ernest Brown of St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church. He calls it “instrumental.”
But he says, “I could not have made it without the peace of mind” provided by his wife.
Once diagnosed, “I started doing research to educate myself, (and) what I found really amazed me,” he said.
The risk factors included being older than 50: “I was over 50.”
They included being black: “I am African American.”
They include a family history of cancer: “My father and his two brothers had cancer.”
They include a diet heavy in red meat.
“I had them all,” Coleman said. As important, he added, “I had no idea.”
Although he feels fortunate, maybe even blessed, that his cancer could be surgically removed, the life-saving procedure comes as a package deal that includes a walk through the valley of the shadow of anxiety.
First, there is the post-surgery wait to learn whether the tissue margins are clear and the cancer appears to be eradicated.
Next come the side effects, including “not being able to control your bladder for a while,” Coleman said. A source of worry for everyone, those worries are heightened in a person whose work involves standing alone in front of a congregation.
Similarly, prostate removal, which results in sexual impotence, can prey on unspoken and therefore difficult to manage fears about what Coleman describes as “the manhood part of you.”
As a pastor, “I’ve seen so many men equate themselves with their ability to perform, and they make bad decisions as a result of that,” he said.
What he hadn’t been aware of was how many men who don’t have prostate cancer face the same anxieties because of “a myriad of things.”
“Nobody talks about it,” he said.
But after his surgery they talked to him.
The list of things Coleman learned became sub-topics in a prostate cancer workshop he offered at his church after recovering from surgery. But as a teacher, he also learned from those who came to listen.
“A lot of them were dealing with it, and a lot of them had already had the surgery,” he said. But again, it was news to him.
In a community in which the church historically has played such a pivotal role, it doesn’t seem a stretch to describe the silence about prostate cancer as “bedeviling.”
It amounts to what logicians might call a tautology of risk: Black men are at higher risk from dying from prostate cancer. Worried about their vulnerability, they avoid visits to the doctor. Delays in visiting the doctor prevent an early diagnosis. Instead of making routine visits to the doctor, black men more routinely die of prostate cancer.
All this is why, on a community level, it’s not a stretch to describe the Sisters United program — at which churches routinely reserve and fill tables — with the same word Coleman used to describe his wife: A godsend.
For information about the Sisters United event, call Young Hair at 937-324-4301.
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