SPRING LAKE, NJ — Lying in bed one night in 2007, Peter Criss felt something strange: a small lump on his left breast.
“I thought, ‘It’s a nodule, I’m a guy, I don’t think it’s anything more than that,’ ” he said. “The more I messed with it, the bigger it got and the more it hurt, and that started really scaring me.”
The 63-year-old Kiss drummer underwent tests and a surgical procedure to remove the lump. A week later, the doctor called. It was breast cancer.
“My heart hit my stomach and my knees buckled,” Criss recalled.
The good news was that Criss had caught the disease at its earliest stage. After a second surgery, he did not need chemotherapy, radiation or medication.
Now, the rocker who once performed in Catman makeup is speaking out about his illness to encourage other men to get tested.
“The more you sit around and say, ‘Well, it’s going to go away,’ that time could be the time that you save your life,” he said.
Men account for only 1 percent of all breast-cancer cases, but about 2,000 men develop it each year, and 440 die from it, according to the National Cancer Institute.
“I am the Catman, and I do have nine lives,” Criss said. “But I think I’m down to five now.”