Five Years Cancer Free

On December 16, 2005 I went to Fresno Community Hospital to have my cancerous prostate removed. This week, five years later, my PSA test came back with a score of .000001, indicating no recurrence of the malignancy. As my surgeon Dr. Marty Prah said, "We can now consider you cured."

By the end of this year it is estimated that 217,730 American men will have been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2010 and that 32,050 will have died from it. You can find these statistics and a wealth of information on the subject at the Prostate Cancer Site of the National Cancer Institute, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The key to survival is early detection. I owe mine to my primary care physician, Dr. John Coffey here in Visalia. It's really important for men of 50 and over to get annual physicals. This is for a number of reasons, including cholesterol, blood pressure and heart function in addition to prostate health. He felt a bump on my prostate, which a biopsy determined to be prostate cancer. I had not been experiencing any of the usual symptoms such as difficulty urinating or having to urinate frequently or several times a night. My PSA blood test was not yet elevated.

Dr. Prah is one of the local pioneers of laproscopic prostate surgery. Fresno Community was the first hospital in the area to have a "Da Vinci Machine" that allows the surgeon to make the necessary incisions precisely by remote control. Instead of a long vertical scar down my abdomen as is customary in traditional surgery, I have five tiny marks a couple of inches below the belly button. I stayed overnight one night in the hospital afterward and was able to walk around a bit in a week. In two weeks I was out walking the neighborhood for exercise. The recovery time is about half that of traditional surgery.

At first the follow up appointments were quarterly but now they are down to yearly. The process helped make me more health conscious in general. I have improved my diet, lost some weight and am on a regular program of running, walking, weights and calisthenics. I feel better than I have in years.

So for all the men approaching 50, play it smart and start getting those checkups. Don't let fear or indifference put you in jeopardy, especially if you have people depending on you. You'll be glad you did.

Another Unnecessary Death

I talked to a woman today who's losing her daughter to breast cancer. We'll soon have another preventable death and another set of motherless kids.

Let's call the daughter Holly. Holly has four children. Holly got divorced. Holly had no health insurance. So when she felt a lump in her breast, Holly didn't go to the doctor. There would have been the visit, then referral to a specialist, then all sorts of tests. That kind of stuff is expensive. She'd had a lump that wasn't malignant before. Maybe she would get lucky again, she hoped. Maybe she could save some money she and the kinds really needed.

But maybe didn't happen this time. When Holly's mother finally found out she told her to go; she would pay for it. By then several months had gone by. The news was bad. The cancer is in both breasts and the lymph system. Holly was told she had only weeks to live, no more than a month.

But Holly is a fighter. She's a former top high school athlete and still has a competitive streak. Her mother is going to borrow money for a desperate operation. They're going to remove both breasts, a lot of skin and many lymph nodes. Then she'll have massive radiation. There will be a lot of sickness and excruciating rehab. The prognosis? This will probably delay her death by two or three years. As extensively as the cancer has spread there's almost no hope of getting it all. It's probably in her thoracic organs. But there might be a 1% chance of longer-term survival. And a couple of more years for the kids to have a mother will be good, too. After all, the youngest is only three.

On a national news show yesterday I saw a wealthy attorney whining about the Obama proposal to let income taxes for those earning at least $250,000 a year return to their pre-Bush levels, going up 4% to fund a $600+ billion reserve to get a national health insurance program off the ground. He complained it would "destroy my American dream." Cry me a river, bub. Take one more DUI case a year if you're so down about paying an average extra $1,100 in taxes after deductions out of your $300,000 income. What about Holly's American dream? What about her kids? What about the 50 million (and rising) other Americans in the same boat? How many more thousands must die for no good reason? I often wonder what planet people like that attorney come from.