People and Culture

I Thought I Was Healthy as an Ox. Then My Doctor Called at 7:30 A.M.

I knew nothing about PSA tests or prostate cancer. As far as I was concerned, PSA was alphabet soup.

I had no history of cancer in my family. Three of my four grandparents lived past 95. I had been healthy as an ox for most of my life. Getting a physical at any age simply did not occur to me.

Who has a physical when nothing feels wrong?

A blood test in 2008 or 2009 showed that my prostate-specific antigen (or PSA) level was 8, above the PSA level of 4 that has traditionally been considered the normal threshold.1 But my doctor focused instead on a thyroid condition, and not on the PSA result. Ten years later, I returned from an Alaskan cruise with a cough I could not shake. I went to the doctor because I knew something was wrong, so I asked for a physical and a full panel of blood tests.

The next morning, my doctor called at 7:30.

The one thing you never want is a call from your doctor first thing the morning after an appointment. He told me to contact a urologist as soon as the office opened. My PSA was 22.

After completing further testing, the doctor said he had “not great” news and bad news. The not great news was that I had prostate cancer. My wife and I sat there, stunned.

“The bad news?” I asked.

“It’s metastatic,” he said.

My wife was devastated. I was still trying to process the word “cancer,” never mind metastatic. The first sentence out of my mouth was, “OK, Doc, what do we do?”

Then he told me he wanted to attack it aggressively.

“Bring it on,” I said. “Let’s do that.”

I underwent wide-field radiation to treat the cancer in my prostate, hips and surrounding lymph nodes. I also received brachytherapy, a procedure that delivers radiation directly to the prostate. After treatment, my PSA became undetectable.

But treatment brought unexpected complications.

Within months, I struggled to complete the 3.5-mile walk I regularly took with my wife. Soon, I could barely climb the stairs in my home. Radiation had triggered inflammation near a bundle of nerves at the base of my spine. At one point, someone told me to prepare for life in a wheelchair.

There was no way I was going to let that happen.

I used a walker for a while. Today, I use a cane. I will probably never hike again, and that is a real loss. But I’m alive, and my prostate cancer remains under control. 

My experience taught me the value of speaking openly about my diagnosis and what I’ve been through. Telling my family was hard. Telling friends became easier. Once I started sharing, I learned that nearly everyone knew someone affected by prostate cancer. Talking about it helped others understand what I faced, and it forced me to clarify how I felt. 

I now ask my doctors the same question at every visit: “OK, Doc, what do we do next?”

My PSA remains undetectable, but I want us to think ahead.

¹ National Cancer Institute, "Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) Test."