Elk Grove Village mayor announces prostate cancer diagnosis

Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson has announced he has prostate cancer and will have surgery next month to remove it.

His doctors, who believe the cancer is confined to the prostate, will perform an outpatient robotic procedure to remove the whole prostate Dec. 18 at Ascension Alexian Brothers Medical Center.

“I’ve got four kids and 10 grandkids, with more grandkids coming. I want to see them grow up,” Johnson said at a village board meeting Tuesday night. “It’s not a death warrant. You can fight it. You can beat it. I plan on beating it.”

It’s the third major health scare for the longtime mayor, who had double-bypass heart surgery in 2014 and was severely injured in a biking accident in 2010.

Johnson, 65, said he’s had a PSA test annually for the last 20 years. About a year and a half ago, his PSA score started going up; an MRI and biopsy followed to confirm the presence of cancer.

He said he decided to go public with his medical condition to encourage men to get checked for prostate cancer.

“I’m doing it to hopefully send a message out,” he said.

Johnson, elected mayor in 1997 after four years as a village trustee, has missed only one village board meeting in that span. That was during his recovery from heart surgery in February 2014.

He says he plans to be in attendance at the Jan. 13 board meeting, which is nearly four weeks after his upcoming surgery.