To Your Health!

If you are still looking for a New Year’s Resolution, I have one to suggest -- be diligent about monitoring and managing your health.

Early this year I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. My urologist was actually shocked at my biopsy results.  I had some of the early indicators, which I had been tracking for about 7 years, and everything pointed to a continued “watchful waiting,” a process where you wait until the signs indicate that cancer is likely.  This process reminds me of a jack-in-the-box toy -- you know jack is going to pop out, you just don’t know when, but when he does, you are startled.

Jack popped out when my biopsy results came in, and I was startled.

A range of treatments were discussed, and I opted for the suggested approach...surgery.  Being fortunate enough to live close to Baltimore, I decided to seek a second opinion from the urology department at Johns Hopkins and called to make an appointment.  Apparently my timing was spot-on, as I was assigned to the world-renowned director of urology at Hopkins, Dr. Partin.  In typical fashion, when I went to my appointment, I took a chart that I had developed to track my Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) over the last 7 years, and proudly presented it to Dr. Partin. He looked at it, and then at me, paused. and finally said, “you're an engineer right?” He continued and said, “Nice chart, but you did it wrong...you should have plotted PSA on a semi-log scale, and you would see a linear relationship.”  This immediately made me think of two things:

• Dang it! I should have known this! and;
• I really like this doctor, he was straight to the point.

My PSA moved into the watchful waiting region about 2 years ago, but when it continued to trend upward, a biopsy was ordered.  As I mentioned, my urologist was convinced that only low level cancer would be detected, and watchful waiting could continue, but I guess all the other normal signs were misleading.

I chose a robotic surgical approach since it is supposed to be more accurate, and, it is just really cool. The robotic surgeon was Dr. Allaf (aka Mo, as he was referred to by Dr. Partin when we were introduced the morning of surgery, July 3rd). Dr. Partin assisted.

Upon closer examination of my dearly departed prostate, the pathologist concluded that the cancer was a wee-bit more severe than had first been thought (an in situ biopsy only samples a tiny part of the prostate).  The cancer was concentrated on the outside region, which made it more likely to spread. Fortunately, there were no signs of it spreading, and my follow up blood tests 3 months after surgery showed no sign of cancer (PSA was not measurable).  Nonetheless, given the pathology results, I got slotted into radiation treatment, which is still underway.  By the way, I am totally amazed at the spatial accuracy of radiation these days (less than 3mm diameter).

So, as you ponder your New Year’s Resolutions, I suggest that you resolve to make sure that all your health tests are up to date, that you probe to fully understand what all of your indicators mean, and that you manage your health accordingly.  I think my engineer tendencies to measure and track everything helped me stay on top of my situation.  You only have one life, so take care of it.

My last radiation treatment is in just a few days, the day before my 61st birthday.  It has been one heck of year, and I welcome 2015!

Happy New Year!