Brian Custer also works for ESPN, hosting “SportsCenter”, as well as doing play-by-play for college basketball and football games.Custer believes there remains a stigma about the disease, the side effects that are commonly associated and the often uncomfortable and invasive tests that are required. He was 42 and working at SNY at the time, and he and his wife Carmen’s children were 10, eight and three years old at the time.
“When I first got the diagnosis and they told me what it was, I’ll be honest, my first thought was how could I have that, isn’t that stuff that your grandfather gets? What are you talking about? And then when they told me that mine was aggressive, and that I needed to have surgery within a month, I was floored,” Custer said. “I was dumbfounded, and I wanted no one in the world to know what I had.
“When I found out some of the side effects that came with the disease, I was embarrassed that people would think like, ‘Oh my god, this guy is gonna have impotence, this guy is gonna be sterile, this guy might have erectile dysfunction.’ Man, all of the stereotypes, I felt like were on me and I was like ‘there’s no way I’m letting anybody know that I have this.’
“For me, that was really the first thing that hit me. I felt like I had a Scarlet Letter, and I didn’t want anybody to know I was wearing it.” “My oncologist who did the surgery, I remember him looking me in the eye,” Custer said. “He said: ‘I’m the best at what I do. I’m gonna save your life. I only need one thing from you. I need you, because of who you are, to use your platform, to let men of color know that this is affecting them at twice the rate that it’s affecting white men.
“It was also that same night where it was just like, ‘This disease will not take me down.’ That’s why I love the sport so much, it’s really like the theater of life. You’re gonna face some s–t in life. And sometimes you’re gonna get knocked down. Are you gonna just lay down on the mat? Or are you gonna get back up?”