Mathew Knowles, father to Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Solange Knowles announced that he is battling 1A breast cancer, and says he hopes he can bring awareness to the stigma surrounding the disease for men.
"I noticed because I wear white T-shirts. I had a dot of blood on my T-shirt," Knowles told GMA.
"The first day I was like "Oh, OK, no big deal ... maybe it's something that just got on my T-shirt." Second day I looked and the same thing and I was like, "Eh ... interesting."
Then on the third day I was like, "What is this? I wonder what this is."
A couple of days passed, and I didn't have any type of discharge. Then on the fifth day, another, just a tiny drop of blood. I told my wife, I said, "Look at this," And she says, "You know, when I cleaned the sheets the other day I saw a drop of blood on it, and I didn't pay any attention to it -- but this is kind of weird." I immediately went to my doctor.
When I had the blood on my T-shirt initially I didn't think it was breast cancer. My mind went a lot of places. My mind went to what medication I was on, because different medications might have caused some sort of discharge ... and then I thought, just because of the risk factor, that it could be breast cancer and I would go get a mammogram.
For context, in 1980 I worked in the medical division of Xerox. I worked there for eight years, selling Xeroradiography, which was at that point the leading modality for breast cancer."
Knowles says his mother's sister died of breast cancer as did several other members of his family.
