‘I BEAT BREAST CANCER’
Mathew Knowles’ brave battle
The first time Mathew Knowles spotted a pinpricksize red dot on his shirt, in July 2019, he didn’t think much of it. He found another spot on his shirt the next day, but again, the music producer and father to superstars Beyoncé and Solange let it go. When it happened a third time, though, Knowles, 68, brought it up with his wife of seven years, Gena Avery, who said she had noticed similar spots on their bedsheets. “I said, ‘OK, I need to go to the doctor’,” recalls Knowles, who had learned to be mindful of his health after years of selling medical devices, including mammography equipment. Though he hadn’t felt like anything was wrong, he knew nipple discharge is one of the signs of breast cancer for men. After a mammogram and a biopsy, his suspicions were confirmed: He had breast cancer. “I was in disbelief,” he says.
Breast cancer in men is rare – only about 1 per cent of the more than 270,000 breast cancer cases in the US each year occur in men – but about 500 of the 2670 men diagnosed will die. Knowles says he was lucky: His cancer was stage 1A, meaning it was small and hadn’t spread to the lymph nodes. “I’m very, very grateful,” he says. “I’m fortunate that I didn’t have to do any chemo.”
But it wasn’t easy telling Avery, 55, who had just lost her sister to breast cancer. “For her to hear now her husband has breast cancer,” he says, “it was very difficult.” Also difficult: He would need a mastectomy in one breast. He held off telling his daughters about his cancer until after the surgery. “I wanted to reassure them that it wasn’t a life-or-death situation,” he says. The procedure went well – he was at work a week later – and now he’s in remission.
But there was one more surprise. Tests revealed he has the BRCA2 gene mutation, which raises his risk for breast, melanoma,
“If I can help one person save their life, then this is worth it”
prostate and pancreatic cancers. “All those years I’ve been in diagnostic imaging, I had never heard the word BRCA before,” he says. “If I’d known, I would have had a double mastectomy.” Knowles “immediately” went to get MRIs of his prostate, pancreas and liver and underwent a skin cancer screening, which he repeats every six months. And he started working with Invitae, a genetic testing company, because he wants everyone with a family history to get tested – he has got Beyoncé and Solange to do it – and stay on top of their health.
“If you’re ahead of the curve, then your outcome will be, most of the time, great,” he says. “I’m a living example.”
He knows it isn’t easy for men to speak up if they are concerned. “I didn’t feel good opening that door that said Women’s Breast Centre or having the person ask me, ‘How can I help you?’, thinking I’m waiting on my wife,” he says, but his peers need to “man up” about breast cancer, or “chest cancer”, as he prefers to call it: “This can’t just be about females.”
Avery says this experience has changed her husband “for the better”. He cut out alcohol, changed his diet and now regularly exercises. “He’s become an advocate for male health and wellness, especially among our Black men,” she says. In fact, African-American men have breast cancer rates 52 per cent higher than white men. “I want to save lives,” Knowles says, “especially in the Black community.”