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So I'm sitting in the urologist exam room. He walks in very serious like, sits down and begins, Jim, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but you have prostate cancer. So I reach into my back pocket, whip out of note book, much like Captain Kirk whipping out his communicator, and say, okay, fine, So I have questions. The doctor had a shocked look on his face and says something like, Wow, you're prepared for this. Yes, I was. How do most people react when presented with the C word? I'm jimpolling. This is my view from the middle. I'm a cancer survivor. I guess I really don't feel like a cancer survivor. I helped my wife when she was volunteering with a Susan G. Coleman organization that helps women fight breast cancer. Now those people are cancer survivors. The types of cancer I've had were, through the grace of God, discovered early and relatively easily managed. I say relatively because I've known many people with the C word that went through treatments and surgeries far worse than mine. In two thousand and nine, the company I was working for had a health plan that required I get a physical every year. I grumbled and groaned about it because I hadn't had a check up in years and I felt fine. But it was a choice of the exam or no health insurance, so I went. The blood work showed my PSA level was up, and the doctor referred me to a urologist. Now I had no idea what a PSA was. Heck, I was in radio and me PSA meant public service announcement. But hey, that's a different PSA. This PSA stands for prostate specific antigen. The PSA test is done on men to screen for and then monitor the progress of abnormal prostate conditions, including, but not limited to, prostate cancer the sea word anyway, usually takes a few tests spaced apart for the doctors to determine if you have it. They measure the rate in which your PSA level rises. For example, my PSA had risen to a three point seven. Now different men have different levels. Some men can have a PSA a seven and still be considered normal as long as it doesn't rise. But mine had risen from something lower than a three point seven in between blood tests. I don't remember what the original number was. What's more, they rely on a lot of family history since a lot of the stuff is genetic. My father died from prostate cancer. My brother had a complete prostatectomy from prostate cancer. When the urology team heard that, they all started jumping around, flailing their hands, gnashing their teeth, and getting out medical instruments which would be inserted into holes in my body that were never meant to have things inserted. The eurologists said they need to do a biocy Well, that was fun. Imagine if you will. I know I sound like Rod Serling opening an episode of the Twilight Zone, but imagine, if you will, someone probing someone in your body that you don't want to be probed, and taking a rubber band and snapping it up against an organ inside of you as this device snatches minute pieces of your prostate for microscopic examination. That's what a prostate biopsy is like. Ouch. Let me repeat that. Ouch. Anyway, as I suspected I had the C word, I actually had expected it even before the biopsy. I mean it seemed like prostate cancer was a family affair for me. So before the eurology appointment where the doc was to reveal the biopsy results. I had written down a bunch of questions in a pocket notebook. The day of the appointment came and the eurologists came into the room very serious like, and sat down and said, Jim, I'm sorry to have to tell you that you have prostate cancer. Now. I don't know how some people react to news like this, but it probably wasn't the way I reacted because I surprised the heck out of the eurologist when, without pausing a beat after he broke the bad news, I reached into my back pocket, whipped out the notebook and said, Okay, I have questions. I believe. The eurologist said something like, wow, you're prepared for this. Yes, I was. Then he said something to me that felt a little weird. This is not your endgame. Well, I would hope not. But when I look back on that comment, I guess there are some whose endgame began with a visit to the urology office. Much liked this one, but in my case, this cancer was found so early that it should be easily managed. They prescribed what is called break etherrapy. This is a radiation treatment where dozens of radiated titanium seeds are surgically implanted in the prostate, much different than traditional radiation where they radiate you with a machine externally. So surgery was scheduled and the seeds implanted. In an earlier episode, I talked about the surreal nature of the anesthesia that used to put you under for surgery. Check out the episode called the Pimple. See how I get you to listen to other episodes. Pretty slick, anyway, I digress. Anyway, it took about eighteen months for the PSA level to start going down, but it was going in the wrong direction for a while, and they were concerned. Even did another biopsy ouch, but it showed the cancer was gone, and eventually the seeds did their job, and now my prostate level is below A one. But that was not my only bout with the sea word. In nineteen seventy five, I traveled with my parents to Florida from Michigan. I was a fair skinned boy now living in the Sunshine State at a time when no one even heard of sunblock sun tanning. Lotions of the time included copper tone, baby oil, and iodine. I'd burned so badly my first year in Florida, I looked like a stop sign half the time, and you could have a barbecue on my back. I learned far too late that a fair skinned guy like me, who is so white that I'm blue, has no business being out in the sun without a hazmat suit. So it isn't surprising that many years later I had to have several skin cancer is cut off my back and arms, and later my face. There was so much of it on my back and arms that they actually had to do, honest to God's surgery, several hours of it, complete with anesthesias, surgical gowns, the doctors, nurses, heart monitors, loved ones, pacing in the waiting room, et cetera, et cetera, all to get this stuff cut off of me. After that, I kept the dermatologists, mantioned mortgage payments up to date, with regular checkups, several what they called Moe's surgeries. It's MHS, not Moe like Larry Mow and curly. These were office surgeries where they cut the cancer's area off, biopsy it then and there, and if they need to cut more and more off until they get it all. So I was the poster boy for skin cancer. But all that stuff was what I referred to as the Fisher Price of cancers. These were all basal cell and squeam of cell carcinomas, easily managed by a one two three gone procedure, and on with life as we know it. I did have one melanoma, but it wasn't bad. It was what they called an incitu, meaning it didn't spread anywhere, so they cut it out and I went on my merry way. Like I said, my father died of prostate cancer. They simply caught it too late for any treatments to be effective. My mother also died of cancer when she was sixty nine years old. It was a cancer in her stomach, lining that the thing started in her spleen. It took all of thirty days from diagnosis until she passed away for that horribleness to happen. My brother not only had prostate cancer, which required that his prostate be removed, but in his time in the Navy stationed in Vietnam around Agent Orange, it allowed him to contract lung cancer or he had to have a lung removed. My wife and daughter both have had breast cancer. My wife had a lumpectomy with traditional radiation treatments and no chemotherapy, but my daughter had to have a double mastectomy, complete with chemo and radiation. It's my wife there refers to the condition as the sea word. My wife's best friend also passed away from breast cancer. We all watched her bravely face the deadly disease until it finally got the best of her. It's hard to find anyone these days who hasn't been affected, or have had a loved one, a friend, a coworker, or a neighbor affected by cancer. I'll bet as you're listening to this episode, you can name off a few people in your life who have fought off this disease. But there I was in the middle. Yes me, your humble podcast host. Yeah, I had the prostate thing. I had the skin cancer thing. Then in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three, a pimple from hell turned into a perotid gland cancer, requiring head and neck surgery and thirty proton radiation treatments. I talk about all that experience in the Pimple Podcast episode. You really should listen to that. By the way, the older you get, the morologists you have. I've cotted nine as of this writing. I see I have a urologist, a dermatologist, a radiation oncologist, a surgical oncologist, a dental oncologist, a speech pathologist, a hematologist, and an odal aerynthologist. Oh and just a fun a gastro intro. I'm planning to get them all together one of these days for an ologists pool party. Whoo. Anyways of this recording, I'm two years out from all those treatments, and I'm still dealing with a boatload of minor side effects, from my dry mouth to lockjaw to hearing problems. But I've said it before and I'll say it again, all these things are nonsense compared to what so many people fighting the sea word have to deal with. I volunteer at the Orlando Health Cancer Institute once a week. I honestly hesitate to even talk about what I do there because I don't want anyone to interpret it as self aggrandizement. That's not why I do it. But some have asked me why I do it, and I have two answers for them. First, I say, hey, I spend one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in my treatments there, so I thought it only fitting that I come back and work for them for free. Huh. But seriously, folks, the real reason I do it is for my own perspective. I see and I assist people there every week who make what I'm going through look like a day at Wally World. I have no cause to complain because in my life and not every no one can say this. I have beaten cancer twice. It's a God thing with me. I've sweated out the biopsies, the surgery is, the prognoses, the X rays, the CT and PET scans, and a forty five ton cyclotron particle accelerator that delivered proton radiation to my head and neck. I've rung the bell. At the end of my treatments, I prayed for healing, and I pray every day for healing for the others I meet who are struggling day after day trying to defeat this ugly thing we call the sea word. I'm Jim Pulling, and that's my view from the middle. Have a story to tell about being in the middle, Let us know. Email Jim at my View from the Middle dot com. That's Jim at My View from the Middle dot com.