By Chris Faulkner
It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but this can also be a good time to bring up cancer specific to men, as I can well attest.
I have prostate cancer. Again. For the third time.
Just as women can have a recurring case of breast cancer despite having had a mastectomy, men can have prostate cancer come back despite having the organ removed.
I was more motivated, though, to bring this up after seeing a cartoon posted on Facebook about the topic of cancer.
The gist of it was the conspiracy theory that medical researchers will never find a “cure for cancer” as their revenue stream would dry out.
This ignores the fact that there are many cancers and many causes, so it’s not as if there will be a magic pill and we can shut down all the research labs.
Much of the procedures and treatments that have helped me in my journey came from someone’s endeavors.
My story
I’m 66, and back when I turned 40, I dutifully went to my doctor for a prostate exam as that’s the age men should start thinking about it.
Then I did not do my due diligence, forgetting everything until 2015, after my 57th birthday. One of the warning signs prompted me to have the exam and blood work to reveal my prostate-specific antigen (PSA).
My PSA number was 13, which meant nothing to me, but I was told it was high.
I was also told that it was a “good” cancer to have because “more men die with it than from it.”
A follow-up procedure revealed the cancer was “aggressive” and that I needed radiation or removal to get rid of it, the two “cures.”
The radiologist thought it was a toss-up, with pros and cons on either option.
However, I was also sent to Dr. Chad Tracy, a urologist at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. He said that if his health was on the line, he would go for the removal. That was good enough for me.
Dr. Tracy told me that it was better that I had cancer at the time than 10-12 years ago, as more advancements had been made in treatment.
For one thing, Dr. Tracy would use robotic surgery. I searched his bio on the university website and discovered that he was head of the robotic surgery team and had already performed 400 such surgeries!
I was getting the captain of the All-America team.
I had my prostate removed in January 2016, but Dr. Tracy said that due to its aggressive nature, it could come back.
It did.
You have to follow up with quarterly blood work, and with it removed, the PSA should be under .03, undetectable.
But mine was higher in June, and by September, it was determined I had to have radiation, the other cure.
Chemotherapy doesn’t work for prostate cancer. Given what I know from friends who have had it, the toll it takes on your body, I’ll take that as a good thing.
As such, it was humorous when people at church would comment, “You look good,” even though nothing about my cancer should make me appear ill.
Radiation involves 35 treatments over seven weeks in which you are to report with a full bladder, lie flat under the radiation zapper, and be told, “Now hold it for 19 minutes.”
As an extra precaution, I was given hormone treatment by way of pills that would stem the advancement of the disease if the radiation didn’t work.
But you had to wait until the hormones were out of your system — a year-long wait — to see if the cancer was gone.
It was.
The numbers were where they should be after three years of quarterly checkups, and it looked like I was in the clear.
Until I wasn’t.
The PSA number was .12 in 2021, which meant it was back to low to make any treatment plan.
The PSA grew slowly. In January 2023, my number was .39, which wasn’t double the number from a year ago. That’s a good thing, said Dr. Tracy, as doubling within a year would be a bad thing.
In April, three months later, it had doubled to .88.
But medical research comes to the rescue again. There’s a PET Scan mixture specifically for detecting prostate cancer. It had to come from Chicago, but when I finally had the test done, UIHC had a batch from Davenport, expecting that Iowa City would soon be making its concoction.
The PET scan results came back, and they couldn’t find anything, which was a surprise but a good one.
Six months later, the PSA was .33, so the .88 was determined to be a glitch.
The number is still increasing: .66 this January and .99 in April. I go to Iowa City the following Monday to see if it’s high enough to bring out the PET scan again.
I consider myself very fortunate. Through all this, nothing about my life has changed.
I know many cancer patients who go through this length of time with treatments and recovery and relapse and treatments and hopefully more recovery. Some don’t make it.
But some have survived a type of cancer that others in the past did not, and for that, we can thank those in the medical field who continue to make progress.