Sponsored by Cape Fear Valley Health.
Retired U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Joe Allen, 67, had wanted to join the Army as a little boy, looking up to his favorite uncle who served as a staff sergeant in the Army.
“You can say I was destined to be a soldier,” Joe said. “And I got to live out my childhood dream.”
Joe joined the U.S. Army out of high school and went straight to training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in 1975. And for the next 37 and a half years, he served multiple tours with the 82nd Airborne Division and XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, now Fort Liberty, before retiring in 2012.
Highlights of his career adorn his house walls and office with dozens of military coins, photos with former U.S. presidents, and medals.
During his life in the Army, he served multiple tours to Iraq, Grenada, Operation Desert Storm, and Operation Desert Shield, but in 2017, Joe was in for a fight with a silent killer.
“You know, military men know more acronyms than anyone in the world,” Joe said. “Ironically very few know what ‘PSA’ [prostate-specific antigen] stands for. No one hears it until you hear the ‘c’ word.”
Cancer — more specifically, prostate cancer. The prostate is an essential gland for reproduction “because it supplies part of the seminal fluid (semen), which mixes with sperm from the testes,” according to the Prostate Cancer Foundation. “The prostate (not prostrate) is a small, rubbery gland about the size of a ping-pong ball, located deep inside the groin, between the base of the penis and the rectum.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, PSA stands for prostate-specific antigen, a protein produced by the prostate gland that can be measured in the blood to help detect prostate cancer.
Five months after his wife, Patricia, died from ovarian cancer in May 2017, Joe received a phone call out of the blue from his primary care doctor. Joe was told that his PSA levels were increasing based on his last couple of blood work panels for his regular annual checkups.
A little shocked, Joe followed up with a urologist to get further tests, and two weeks later he learned he had prostate cancer despite having no signs or symptoms.
“My urologist asked me if I had a weak urine stream and I was being funny answering back that I could bounce all the water off the commode,” Joe said. “I didn’t have one inkling whatsoever.”
That is why he said many call prostate cancer “the silent killer.”
“I had just buried my wife and now I was facing prostate cancer,” Joe said. “2017 was a big year.”
He decided to undergo a radical prostatectomy, where the whole prostate gland is removed, according to Cape Fear Valley Health, in October 2017 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where he had spent a lot of time visiting fellow soldiers.
While he was in the hospital, his good friend Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, who he served alongside as part of the command team for the U.S. Forces-Iraq, came to visit.
“When he came to see me, he said if you are an African American in this country, if you don’t have some kind of problems with your prostate, you haven’t lived long enough,” Joe recalled.
Joe said Austin was diagnosed with prostate cancer in December 2023.
“He was right,” Joe said of Austin’s well-publicized diagnosis and journey.
The National Cancer Institute says that prostate cancer is the most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among men in the United States. One in eight men will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime.
For Black men, it is higher.
According to the Zero Prostate Cancer organization, one in six will be diagnosed, and “Black men are 1.7 times more likely to be diagnosed with — and 2.1 times more likely to die from — prostate cancer than white men.”
“Being over 50, overweight, or having a family history also contributes to risk factors,” Joe said.
Joe said doctors suggest that Black men be screened regularly, beginning in their 40s. He has now made it his life’s mission to educate the community, especially Black men, about the importance of getting screened regularly.
In an effort to educate the community and raise awareness for prostate, ovarian, and childhood cancer, Joe organized an “All The Way Joe” golf tournament and a Cancel Cancer Walk and Family Fun Day this year. He plans to continue those efforts every September for Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. More information can be found at allthewayjoe.com.
“We need to encourage men of color to get checked regularly and early,” Joe said.
When Joe came out of the hospital, he learned that he had an advanced stage of prostate cancer and it had been a good decision to have the surgery. However, his cancer journey was not over.
Earlier this year, his PSA levels started to increase again.
“I was lucky that it had not spread to other areas of my body, but I needed to have eight weeks of radiation,” Joe said.
He started radiation five days a week in June at the Cape Fear Valley Cancer Treatment & CyberKnife Center.
“After meeting the staff ladies of the cancer center, I looked forward to seeing them every day,” Joe said. “I cannot say enough about the staff there. They calmed every bit of my anxiety.”
He said that while his journey with radiation ended in August, he continues to get screened, which he had never thought about before.
“I didn’t have any signs,” Joe said. “That one phone call out of the blue saved my life.”
He wants to normalize the conversation, especially among Black men.
“You hear women talking about breast cancer,” Joe said. “Men should be able to talk openly about prostate cancer. We are responsible for our own health and need to get checked regularly.”
Cape Fear Valley Cancer Treatment & CyberKnife Center is located at 1638 Owen Drive in Fayetteville and is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Cape Fear Valley Health has two additional cancer centers for convenience of care, one in North Fayetteville and one in Lillington. For more information, visit capefearvalley.com/cancer or call 910-615-6910 for medical oncology services and 910-615-5894 for radiation oncology services.
Read CityView magazine’s “Giving” November 2024 e-edition here.
