I’d be lying if I said I had looked forward to yesterday’s quarterly cancer check-in. The day dawned with dread, heavy dread, born of a certain conviction that my blood test would confirm an increasing presence of PSA — and, therefore, evidence of cancer on the advance. My only jot of hope lay in how […]
Continue readingNews (If It’s Real)
April 29, 2012 
9 Comments
Last Monday was my quarterly check-in with the oncologist, and I had hoped that my PSA test results would come back “undetectable” — no evidence of disease. Not so. The oncologist conditioned the results with (a totally appropriate) “if it’s real.” One data point does not a trend make, especially when this particular data point […]
Continue readingDiagnosis + 5
March 26, 2012 15 Comments
The diagnosis that transformed my life came five years ago today. I was vacationing, driving east on I-10, toward Tucson, when my cell phone broke the monotony of interstate pavement. It was the urologist who had done my prostate biopsy; we had played phone tag for several days, the apparent lack of urgency giving me […]
Continue readingThe New Normal
February 6, 2012 3 Comments
Today marked three months since my completion of salvage radiation. “Has it been three months already?” they asked me at the check-in desk in Radiation Oncology at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. I was reporting for a routine, follow-up visit with my radiation oncologist to attend to any lingering side effects since radiation’s end (none […]
Continue readingA Stalking, Circling Menace
January 17, 2012 7 Comments
I’m on my own now. On Oct 17, I had my final three-month injection of hormone suppressant. So any day now, the side effects (hot flashes, chemo-brain and fatigue) should start ebbing, and testosterone should start flooding. The problem is, testosterone fuels the growth of prostate cancer, so now also begins the big wait-and-see, the […]
Continue readingThe Radiation Arrow
November 8, 2011 8 Comments
My 36 radiation treatments ended today, and we marked the occasion at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance with thank-yous, good-lucks, handshakes, a hug and a team photo of patient and therapists. In the cheer of it all, I felt the sadness of separation. I was the teammate who got traded. They stay together, and I move […]
Continue readingThe Writing on the Wall
October 23, 2011 7 Comments
I went to my first prostate cancer gathering four years ago, in Portland, Oregon, when I was fresh off surgery and unexpected news from pathology was still ringing in my ears: cancer in two lymph nodes. Entering the building, registering, and being handed my conference materials — I felt like a draftee reporting for induction […]
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My First Cancer 
Boys of Summer
It may be the sole summer of my youth that I recall with any real clarity: the summer of ’61, that listless season after high school graduation, when Al Mosher, Bill Salzer and I spent many humid nights at Crosley Field, watching the Cincinnati Reds, under manager Fred Hutchinson, win their way to a National […]
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