NEW ORLEANS — A familiar face to many of you is sharing a very personal story.
Public official Austin Badon and his family decided they could make a difference and maybe even save lives, by talking about a recent health scare.
Four years ago, Austin Badon decided to go public with a personal health story. His weight had crept up. He was nearly diabetic. On our Weight Loss Wednesday report, he talked about his life-changing journey of clean eating and exercising to lose 52 pounds. Now today, with his wife Therese at his side, for the first time he is telling an even deeper personal health story.
“Just going through a night or two of not sleeping, wondering you know if this is actually real, if this is a nightmare,” Austin recalls of waiting for medical test results.
“I was numb having lost my mother to breast cancer. I was trying to be brave,” Austin’s wife Therese Badon said.
“So I went into (my doctor’s) office and he told me, he said, ‘Yes you have prostate cancer,'" Badon said. “My universe stopped.”
A biopsy confirmed it was cancer.
“No local anesthesia, nothing topical, no bourbon, nothing,” Austin said of the painful procedure. “I just had to lay there and bear it.”
In August at MD Anderson in Houston, his prostate was removed. It was minimally-invasive, robotic surgery that spares the nerves in that area. But it was those regular, yearly doctor's exams that really paid off. The cancer was found early. It had not spread. So there was no need for chemo or radiation.
“I'm here today to say a cancer diagnosis is not a death sentence. So, I'm here to just reach out to other men and their significant others to say you know, go get checked,” he stressed.
Austin has seen his dad and an uncle go through prostate cancer. His diagnosis gave the family a new way of looking at life.
“From a spiritual perspective, we know in life and everything that we've gone through, in life God brings us to situations, and he will bring us through these situations," Therese said.
The Badon's decided with the pandemic stress, to wait until today to tell their 10-year-old Ayden. He's very sensitive and had watched his grandmother slip away from breast cancer. When he was 4-years-old, he read her bible versus at her bedside. Until now, he thought dad was having a minor procedure.
“He cried and he said something that I will always remember, he said, ‘Can they operate on me instead?’” Austin remembers.
Austin says this was the toughest opponent he's ever had. Faith and family, and of course knowledgeable doctors, got him through it.
“Just listening to Irma Thomas, she sounds more soulful. The oysters are saltier. The snowballs are sweeter. The kisses are more loving,” Austin said.
And his diagnosis now is cancer free
About one in eight men in the U.S. will get prostate cancer. The number of new cases diagnosed in Black men is nearly 80 percent higher than that of White men.