Get your PSA checked.

[Lynn]

Although this is a public service announcement, that is not the PSA I am talking about.
PSA = Prostate Specific Antigen. I have been in amazingly good health all my life. I have gone 10 years and more at a time without visiting or even calling a Doctor. Thankfully for me, Sherri made me start yearly check-ups. Also, thankfully my primary physician (looks like he graduated high school about 4 years ago… but I digress) paid careful attention to the blood work. I really did not believe I was at risk for cancer. Even though my father went through four bouts of four different cancers over 14 years, after finding out (8 years after he died) that he spent a full year in Japan immediately after the bombs were dropped. So, I attributed his etiology to his 12 month continuous exposure to the radiation.

Had routine blood work done in August. Doc calls and says he is leary of my PSA count. Wants me to abstain from sex for a week (sick bastard) and have more blood drawn. I oblige. It is even higher the second time. Something is amiss here. Sends me to a prostate Doc. Prostate Doc schedules me for a biopsy (mild form of medieval torture). In September we find out I definitely have prostate cancer and that my prostate is the size of a baseball. And, the cancer is aggressive (they have a little chart that lets them know how fast it is spreading).

November 13 I have a radical robotic prostatechtomy with every attempt to spare all the nerves that allow little Lynn to perform all the marital gymnastics he has grown accustomed to. 4.5 hours of surgery. Prostate has grown to softball size with an extension growing into my bladder. They took the two closest lymph nodes as a precaution.

Good news: no cancer on any margin, and no cancer in the lymph nodes. No need for radiation or chemo. I now have a 99% chance of full recovery. Bad news: apparently all the extra work on my bladder required the catheter to be in for 30 days instead of the normal 10. I developed a post op infection from hell that put me back in the hospital. Just barely got home for Christmas. Unbelievable pain in the lower abdomen area. Could not get in and out of a chair or bed by myself. Second good news: doing much better now. I am so lucky to be married to an angel. She takes such good care of me.
I have shared some of this with just a few guys on this board. I wanted to share with the rest of you, because I feel it is important to get checked yearly after 50. I am turning 65 this month.

Here is the weird part. You see all these commercials on TV about guys who can’t take a leak normally. Given the size of my prostate (should be smaller than a golf ball) one would expect I would have had some of those symptoms. I had none of the symptoms you would expect. Pee’d normally, normal stream, never had an issue fully emptying my bladder. Rarely got up more than once a night to pee. Some guys develop an enlarged prostate even without cancer.

So, get checked even if you have no symptoms. Had we not caught this early, I could have been dead in another year, and not known until I started feeling exhausted, that I had prostate cancer that spread to the lymph nodes and was killing me. I found out the day of my biopsy, that one of my cousins’ husband died two days earlier…. from prostate cancer. He was 67 and had no symptoms until it was too late.

Get checked. If you wait until you have symptoms, it may be too late.