Dr. Drew Pinsky was diagnosed with prostate cancer two years ago, was treated, and is now cancer-free, the medical show host tells People magazine.
Violent chills sent him to the hospital, and his wife later encouraged him to get follow-up treatment. Doctors discovered he had an inflammation of the prostate, and Pinsky had a biopsy.
"Lo and behold, I have cancer," Pinsky, 55, told the magazine. He had his prostate removed last July and return to work just 10 days later.
"I'm cancer-free," Pinsky said. "The erectile function is normal, sex drive is normal, bladder works normally. And I don't have to worry about prostate cancer."
"We're all bad as males. I convinced myself I could do my own primary care," he said. "These are very complicated issues. The message I want to give out is that this is still an art. So much of the good outcome for me was the result of people following their intuition, including my wife." (Turns out, Pinsky says, that the chills that started the whole thing probably had nothing to do with his diagnosis.)
Pinsky hosts "Dr. Drew" on HLN and "Lifechangers" on The CW. He's been a doctor for a quarter of a century but admits even he wasn't ready to hear bad medical news.
"The floor goes out from under you. It's like: Oh, crap, I don't want to deal with it," Pinsky told People. "It took me about a year to get used to the diagnosis. But by the time I went to surgery after my third biopsy, I said, 'It's time. Let's get it going.' "