Let me start by saying that I do not have cancer. I figure I should mention that right off the bat for the tl;dr crowd. I feel it’s my calling to gross people out, not cause undue worry.
So why am I even bringing up the big C? It is because I am old, and old people routinely have blood drawn so doctors can tell what’s what. In my case, most are normal. Sure, my triglycerides level is indicative of a man who loves his bourbon and my A1C puts me on the cusp of prediabetes and diabetes. Other than that, all was well. Until it wasn’t.
Recent lab work has shown my PSA (prostate-specific antigen) level to be on the rise. It was not at “holy shit!” level, but high enough for my PCP to refer me to a urologist.
During the first appointment with the specialist, he asked about my symptoms, which were the usual nocturnal peeing habit common among old farts. He then ordered a new PSA test because sometimes the results are wrong. I got another test with an even higher PSA.
When I went to see the urologist again, he was more concerned than I was. I had read that a PSA between 4.5 and 10 put the cancer risk at 25%, which was not too bad. When I quoted this to him, he shook his head. That day, I found out that my velocity of PSA levels not only made the prostate-cancer risk higher, it also increased the odds of it being more aggressive. He said I needed to get an MRI pronto.
Well, shit. It was not like I was being handed a death sentence, at least not yet and probably not at all. After all, prostate cancer was usually something you died with rather than from, according to an article in Esquire. That worked for me. I would be perfectly happy to make it another 20-30 years and have “What didn’t kill him?” as a COD in my autopsy report.
Of course, that assumed that my cancer would be of the ho-hum variety. It does not always work out that way. The raised hands of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman could not stop OJ, but prostate cancer sure did. Until I got my MRI, I had no idea how it was going to be for me.
After waiting a week for insurance authorization, I was able to schedule at an imaging center in Oakland on November 13. After it was done, they gave me a CD with the images in case I wanted to do any digital scrapbooking. I made it a point not to look at it until I got the MRI report from the radiologist. I would not know what to look for and might be tempted into self-diagnosis, which would have put me on the fast track to madness.
The report showed up in my health record that evening, Since Becca is way more knowledgeable when it comes to medical terminology, I asked her to help me go through it. There was an initial “Oh thank fuck” when it said there were no discrete suspicious lesions within the prostate gland. There was also a finding of mild to moderate benign prostatic hypertrophy, which would explain my case of trickle dick.
“Wait a second,” Becca said when she read an entry near the bottom of the report. It described a lesion, despite the no-lesions claim at the top. The good news was that the lesion was confined to the prostate. The bad news was that it had a score of PI-RADS 4. I had no idea what that meant exactly, let alone how the score is assessed, but a quick google search let me know it indicates a high likelihood of cancer. A biopsy is the next and final diagnostic step.
My urologist appointment was on the 19th, so I had six days to mull over the situation. Since whatever was there had not spread, it was very unlikely that I had stage 4 kill-your-ass cancer. It was treatable, but was it going to be with radiation or surgery? Neither was ideal, but I would have preferred having my prostate nuked like a frozen burrito to have someone grab the thing and rip it out by the roots.
Despite a history of life choices that showed little interest in longevity, I found myself not wanting to die anytime soon. I was willing to do whatever it took to keep that from happening. In the meantime, I would try to stay positive and maybe even raise prostate-cancer awareness by wearing a narrow yellow ribbon.
On the day of the appointment, I took an Uber to get there because I was in no mood to deal with Muni. I arrived early, and they put me in an examination room where I could wait until the urologist came in to schedule my biopsy.
That did not happen. The pre-populated template on the report did not get erased during dictation. That lesion on my MRI report belonged to some other guy. There will be another PSA test in April, but it looks like I’m out of the woods for now.
Yay me.