Harry Belafonte

Cancer Type – Prostate

Bio – The singer, actor, and activist who sang Shake Shake Shake Senora, had his prostate gland and some tissue around it removed to survive prostate cancer.

Short Story – Diagnosed in 1996 with prostate cancer, Harry Belafonte underwent a radical prostatectomy. Known for his famous song, ‘The Banana Boat Song’ (which is highly recognizable from the movie ‘Beetlejuice’), the singer has been dubbed the King of Calypso music.

“The prostate is something that attacks that central part of the male body that men are very preoccupied with. Somehow, any disorder there means your life is over, you can’t be a man anymore, you are now something less,” Belafonte said at a benefit for the Hoag Family Cancer Institute in Newport Beach, California. “If you’re going to have [prostate cancer], you’re going to have it. It’s what you do about it that makes the difference — how you conduct your life.”

Belafonte has not always been comfortable speaking out about the disease, however has been known to reassure that through Kegel exercises was able to overcome incontinence.

Thank you Harry for your happy music and positive reassurance to prostate cancer patients and survivors.

Image Credits – By David Shankbone (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons