Where Things Stand Now

Here’s an update of where things are with my cancer. To recap if you came to the party late here, I have prostate cancer and had the prostate removed but they didn’t get all of the cancer because there was cancer under the prostate against the wall of the bladder. There’s multiple areas that are not growing quickly but I can’t leave them in there forever.

I had good news from the standpoint that my PSA hasn’t started to rise yet. If it had I wouldn’t be able to hold off on radiation. However, it’s good that I can hold off on the radiation treatments because I’m not finished healing yet. In particularly my incontinence is a thing plus other things have to improve as well. The easiest way to explain it for me is that when they do radiation that basically freezes everything the way I am now. I won’t improve after that. I don’t want to dribble pee the rest of my life as well as the other things I would have to live with.

So Mayo has agreed that I will be fine to do my future radiation treatments here. That means the next step is to start the process of meeting with the doctors and radiologists here in Rapid. (I hope they are as fun with me as the female radiologist at Mayo was after she asked if I had been exposed to radiation previously and I said that I had been really drunk once and stood in front of the microwave too long. She was awesome and said it didn’t count but told me a few crazy radiation stories) In 3 months I will have my next PSA test here locally and get checked again to see if I have had improvement where I need to improve. Then we take it from there on how long it may be before I would start the radiation.

One last note. I am a young guy. I always feel like a young guy because I want to have fun and have a good time which I equate with being young regardless of how you try to measure the term “young” with years. They forget that in my meetings sometimes because they are used to dealing with men who have prostate cancer in their 70’s and 80’s. So when they talk about still having cancer but there is a good chance I have 5 or even ten years before it would metastasize and kill me they must be forgetting that I’m not in my 70’s or 80’s yet and I am leaning toward wanting to be around long enough to reach that age. As I’ve said before, I’ve had the heart attack, sleep apnea, diabetes, cancer and the list goes on but I’m too much of an ass be snuffed out before I can offend more people over the years to come.

“Enjoy every sandwich” – Warren Zevon