I'm Glad You Asked

By now you know that I am in the final week of radiotherapy for prostate cancer. Sometimes I call it radiation treatment. They are both the same. Since I found out I had prostate cancer I have learned much about cancer and about myself in the process. I can talk more openly than I did in the past. (Sometimes I think I talk too much) Anyway, I was never one to deal with all the body parts. Mine were all functioning so there was no need deal with such matters. But now it seems like I can’t know enough. My therapy team thinks I know a lot, but there is still more that I don’t know.


I have been asked many good questions; questions that I also asked myself in the beginning. When I was told that I had prostate cancer, I didn’t even know exactly where my prostate was located, what it was, or what it looked like. Besides the obvious questions of what it is, where is it and what does it do, here are the questions that I am asked most often:

• “Doesn’t the radiation make you sick?

When most people, including myself, think chemotherapy when you say the word “cancer.” That’s not the case anymore. Radiotherapy and chemotherapy is not the same thing. Chemotherapy uses medications to destroy cancer cells anywhere in your body. Chemotherapy is given either by pill or injection. Radiotherapy uses a beam of radiation, much like that of an x-ray, directed at the prostate to destroy the cancer. My whole body doesn’t get radiation.

• “Does it hurt?”

No, the radiation doesn’t hurt at all. I don’t feel a thing during a treatment session. It’s just like having an x-ray done.

• “How did you get prostate cancer?”

As you get older, (And I have gotten older) the prostate changes. It many cases, as in mine, my prostate became enlarged. The medical term for an enlarged prostate is benign prostatic hyperplasia. (Did you get that? It took me a while to figure that one out) The larger the prostate becomes the more PSA (prostate specific antigen) it produces. PSA is an enzyme that is only produced by the prostate cells. These cells are either normal or cancerous. PSA is leaked into the bloodstream by the prostate cells which can be measured by a PSA blood test. The more enzymes that are produced, the more the enzyme is leaked into the bloodstream.

• “How did you find out you had prostate cancer?”

I have been getting a PSA blood test, in addition to a prostrate exam, done every year I have a physical examination. The doctor felt a hard spot on my prostate and my PSA blood test results were significantly higher than the last time. It had gone from about 7.1 to 12.1 and that was enough to alert my doctor.

• “How much PSA is normally leaked into the bloodstream?”

For men 60 years old or less, the normal level is about 2.5. The normal range is about 4.0 for older men since the prostate usually enlarges and makes more PSA with age.

• “What is the average PSA of men with prostate cancer?”

The average PSA for men with prostate cancer is about 7.2. Fifteen percent of men with prostate cancer have a PSA below 4.0.

Like I said earlier, I am in the final week of treatment and, for the most part, have been symptom free. I have minor bouts with diarrhea, soreness of the rectum, constant urination and sometimes I get a little fatigued in the late afternoon. Besides that, I feel good.

I leave you with the words of Elbert Hubbard, author of “The Forbes Book of Business Quotations,”

“A Friend is a person who knows all about you---and still likes you.”

A couple more to go and you will be “Up To Speed.”

Later, Love Ya!