PROCTOBER....Cancer Awareness Month

Yesterday, I had my annual physical with my doctor. Casey is a young guy with young kids. His dad was a doctor and Casey followed in his footsteps. I’ve known Casey for 10 years, maybe more, and we have a good doctor/patient/friend relationship. When I see him in the halls of the hospital, it’s usually just a quick “hi, how are you” kind of thing as we pass on our way to somewhere else. But when I see him for my physical, we get a chance to catch up on what’s going on with each other. We talk about kids (his), grandkids (mine), family, sports, and hot topics. Besides listening to me talk, Casey listens to my heart, lungs, and belly. He pokes, pushes and prods. Lastly, he reviews my lab results including my cholesterol. He tells me I have a young person’s cholesterol level…for which Cindy hates me. I am a well known snack food junkie…cakes, pies, candy, you name it. If it’s sweet and bad for you, I love it. And my cholesterol levels remain low. Cindy, on the other hand, only has to look at sweets in a store window and her cholesterol level goes up. Thus, her hatred for me and my damn normal cholesterol.

One other lab value Casey checks is my PSA. Prostate-specific antigen is a protein produced by the cells of a mans’ prostate gland. It’s normal for men to have a low level of PSA in their blood, however, prostate cancer and some non-cancerous conditions can cause a man’s PSA level to increase. As men get older, both non-cancerous conditions and cancer become more common. For the many years I’ve seen Casey, my PSA levels were always around 1.0-1.2, normal for a man my age. Since my dad died of complications of prostate cancer (mom and a sister died of breast cancer), it was always good to hear ‘my’ numbers were normal.

At last years’ physical, everything was good except my PSA level had doubled to 2.4. Casey told me to have it repeated in 3 months. When I did, he called me to say the PSA had risen to 4, and he was referring me to a urologist. Weeks later, I met with the urologist whose comments were pretty short-and-sweet. “Given your family history and the gradual increase in your PSA numbers, I can’t rule out that this may be cancer. The best way to find out is to do a prostate biopsy.” We scheduled the date to have my biopsy and I left the office…a little anxious, to say the least. I tried to not say anything to Cindy, but as I mentioned in a prior blog, we’ve been together long enough that my body language gave me away. I confessed what the doctor told me and now ‘we both’ had the chance to worry.

Here’s the basics of my biopsy: drop my shorts, lay on my side, have an ultrasound probe inserted in my rectum which creates an image for the doctor to look at which helps him decide where he’s going to inject Lidocaine to numb my prostate (BTW…it doesn’t TOTALLY numb it!), have the probe reinserted for use to cut samples of my prostate to be tested for cancer cells.

As the doctor was starting the procedure, he told his assistant, “we will be getting six samples.” Immediately upon inserting the probe and looking at the image he said, “no. we’re taking 18 samples” (ended up being 20). Ouch! When done, I was told to sit up and I sat there trying to decide if I wanted to pass out, throw up or run. The doctor then said, “the prostate was larger than it felt” and “come see me in 2 weeks and we’ll go over the results.”

As I gingerly walked to the car, two things ran through my head. 1) His comment that it was larger than what he initially thought and, 2) his 6 samples turning into 20. My mind was busy thinking those were not good signs. When I told Cindy that I would get the results in 2 weeks she scheduled the time off to be there with me. We were going to hear this… ‘together’.

The remaining days were spent with my mind going many directions. If it was bad news, what were we going to say to the girls? What was I going to be able to do for Mason, our grandson that lives with us? What would I say to my brother and sister? (We had a family reunion coming in less than a month and I knew my girls wouldn’t be able to keep the news to themselves and I wanted my other family members to hear it from me if there was bad news to share.) What would I do about work? Which friends would I tell? Would I have to have chemo or radiation? Would the surgery be painful? What would my sex life be like? Should I check out my retirement plan? Should I check into a cemetery plot? This was all new territory I had never been to before.

I then realized these type questions were the same ones going through the minds of many of the patients I care for every day. I take pride in being a very good technologist. I care about them and most realize that and thank me when their test is done. Now with questions about my own health, it gave me a new perspective. Can I be even ‘more’ caring…a better listener, share, care, laugh, cry with them if that’s what they need. Indeed, the whole ordeal made me a better person and better technologist.

In July, just before the reunion, Cindy & I got good news…it wasn’t cancer. But they still wanted to keep an eye on me and there may be future tests to run if there are more changes. A follow up visit was scheduled for November. The reunion was much more relaxing with that news.

Yesterdays’ visit with Casey brought even more relief. A PSA drawn 10 days ago showed my numbers had dropped to 2.75. Casey said, with prostate cancer, the PSA does not go down. I most likely had a case of prostatitis, an inflamed prostate, which raises the numbers temporarily, and it just took time for it to go back down. I will still follow up with the urologist next month but I expect to hear that same good news. And it was sure good news to hear.

Closing comment: The CDC reports that in 2007 (the most recent year resulted) that heart disease and cancer were the 2 leading causes of death, accounting for nearly half (48.5%) of all deaths in 2007.

For your sake and your families, get your checkups, see your doctor, and take care of yourself.

Dan