I haven't posted here since 2019.

The aging process continues!

To keep a long story short over the past six months the specter of Cancer has raised it's head and this time looks at me.

In a routine physical In October, in routine blood work on a routine day, I had an increased PSA level.

PSA or prostate specific antigen is a marker on the health of a man's prostate. When the number goes up it can be an indication of trouble.

Mine went from "Perfectly acceptable, thank you very much." to "Dude, you need more tests."

Another PSA and a K score blood test later and I'm scheduling a biopsy which I had in March.

The doctor biopsied my prostate and took 12 samples.

Four of the samples came back positive for cancer.

One of those cores samples ran smack into a tumor.

Cancer. Stage II.

I had no symptoms and they caught it early.

Motherfucker has to be dealt with.

After consultations with a number of doctors in which my options were discussed it was obvious decisions needed to be made.

1. Active Surveillance. Watch it. Test it. Biopsy it. Yearly. If my numbers go up it'll have to be handled more aggressively.

At this point you say "Well...it's a slow growing Cancer."

At this point the doctors say "On average, it's a slow growing Cancer."

Which means Half the people with it never have much of a problem and the other half die from it.

For me it was a can kicked down the road.

2. Radiation. "I can do your radiation in 5 sessions!" Says the Cyber Knife guy (Dr. Zappy). Except when he can't and it becomes 8 weeks of daily radiation treatments or radioactive pellets placed into the prostate which last months and raises the possibility of lead lined nappies.

There this thing called Second Cancer. Cancer of the bowls or bladder or rectum showing up 10 or 20 years from now as the result of having my prostate irradiated now.

3. Surgery. Cut the motherfucker out. Hopefully, don't cut too much other stuff out so I can still have a usable member in a years time. The short term is ugly but if they can get all of the Cancer then I don't have to worry about prostate cancer anymore.

I liked Dr. Snippy though Dr. Zappy was ok, too.

I'm relatively young. Very fit for my age and should handle the surgery well. I've been training for the last three months, running, weights, and cycling getting ready for the recovery process.

If I had been older then surgery would have been off the table.

Having been born with a host of physical problems that were corrected by surgery in my youth (I remember my last set of surgeries in the mid 1960's quite well) I'm comfortable with going under the knife and here is the best part:

ROBOTS! 

It will robotic surgery which allows Dr. Snippy to "Get Small!" and dig that bloody thing out of there.

Surgery on Monday, May 10.

I'll keep you posted... Weekly on Monday's for the next year.

This will be for you to learn, get information from, share even, regardless of whether you have Prostate  Cancer or are  taking care of someone who is.

Thanks to the NYT for the photo.

There are some great robotic surgery videos on Youtube. Check 'em out!