vindy.com | Check your engines

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Cancer survivor revs up prostate-cancer warning

McClatchy Newspapers

HACKENSACK, N.J.

From motorcycle show- rooms to barbershops, Virgil Simons knows where men are most at ease.

So the former marketing executive, now a cancer survivor and activist, has taken his campaign to raise awareness about prostate cancer to both places. From his home office in Hackensack, N.J., he’s launched an effort that’s become national and international in scope — and saved more than 1,000 lives.

His “Gentlemen, Check Your Engines” program, born at the Bergen County Harley-Davidson showroom in Rochelle Park, N.J., in February 2008, is rechristened as “Ladies and Gentlemen, Check Your Engines.”

“What motivates guys in general is our toys — our cars and bikes,” Simons said. “Guys think of themselves as this machine, a love machine.” And machines need to be tuned up and checked out.

Last year, Alan Bodner moseyed over to the health table after learning that a new tattoo had made him ineligible to donate blood at the dealership’s annual blood drive. There he learned about cholesterol and PSA (prostate-specific antigen) testing. It was a life-changing moment.

“When I told him I was 63 and didn’t know what a PSA test was, he told me it was a test for prostate cancer,” Bodner said. “I wasn’t even thinking about it. I was too healthy.”

He scheduled a visit to his doctor — the first in seven years — had his PSA checked and then rechecked to confirm the abnormal reading and was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He underwent surgery in May.

“Thankfully, I went over to that urologist’s table and started asking questions,” he said. Bodner recovered and rode his 2010 Road Glide Harley-Davidson with friends to last August’s Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota.

Bringing the white lab coats to the leather-jacket crowd is what makes Simon’s program unique.

Dr. Richard Watson, the Hackensack University Medical Center urologist who was at the health table when Bodner showed up, said he goes where the men are to get the word out. “If you wait for them, it could be a long wait,” he said.

“You play it by ear,” he said. “Some guys have a hard time talking about it. You mention that if they have any problems with urination or sexuality, they shouldn’t take it for granted. Some think these things come with time when you get older. Maybe they do, and maybe they don’t. But you ought to get it checked out.”

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men and the second most deadly, killing 30,000 men a year in the United States.

For Simons, such stories are the impetus to spread “Check Your Engines” to other motorcycle and car dealerships. So far, programs have been in the Atlanta and Chicago areas as well as Australia.

Last fall, he started another program called “I’ll Go, If You Go,” to motivate couples: wives to get mammograms and husbands to get PSA tests. It was jointly sponsored by Gilda’s Club of Northern New Jersey and Simons’ Prostate Net organization.

Both build on the marketing insight that brought health education to barbershops. Especially in the black community, these were the original social clubs. Among black men, the incidence of prostate cancer is 60 percent higher than among white men, with the death rate 21/2 times higher.

Working with local medical centers, Simons provided training to barbers and installed computers linked to a website with extensive information on the disease, its risk factors and treatment.

From Bergen County, N.J., it’s grown to include more than 4,100 barbers in the U.S., Australia and India, with a European launch this year.

For Simons, this is the reward of his own life-changing diagnosis with prostate cancer in 1995.

“I became an advocate when I got up off the operating table,” he said. A friend had recommended he get a PSA test. Finding the information and tools to understand the disease and treatment options was difficult, he said. He founded The Prostate Net in 1996 to bring those tools together for others.