No one knows when that moment will come that will change their live forever. We all live our lives, enjoying our family, friends, jobs, hobbies and pass times without ever giving a second thought to how and when it will all change.

Sometimes your life is suddenly altered by a major event like the birth of a child or a death in the family. Sometimes it is a change of job requiring you to move to a new city and sometimes it is a very personal health issue.

I’ve been very fortunate in my life in that my health has always been good, but that all started to change about the time I turned 50 years of age. I did not notice the changes as they happened. Looking back, now I can see the signs. I would just say that the aches and pains I had were just old age settling in. I was a man and I took the ‘manly’ approach to life. I was invincible and nothing could keep me down.

Then one day I had a pain in my side I could not dismiss. I went to my primary care doctor who did some tests. One of these tests was a PSA or ‘prostate specific antigen’. The PSA test is used to screen for prostate cancer. Normal PSA levels range from 0 to 4 ng/ml. My PSA was 10. When he retested, it was 15. A biopsy of the prostate was performed and on April 11, 2005 , I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer.

The Gleason scoring system is frequently used to rate how advanced a case of prostate cancer may be. It is a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is the least advanced and a score of 10 is most advanced. I had a score of 8, however, the cancer had not spread beyond the prostate. At this point, I did a lot of reading, talked with people who had prostate cancer and prayed a lot. The doctor presented me with many treatment options, giving me the choice as to which I would try. In the end, I decided not to have surgery to remove the prostate, but decided on a combination of hormonal therapy, external beam radiation and Brachytherapy radioactive seed implants. Statistics showed that this combination works well for people with my stage of prostate cancer, with a 5 year survival rate of about 100%.

The hormonal therapy came first. Hormonal implants were inserted into my arm that dispensed hormones slowly over time. These hormones are designed to stop my body from producing the testosterone that the cancer needs to grow. This worked well for me since my next PSA test showed a reading of 0.1. I would keep these implants for one year, then have them replaced with fresh implants which I would keep for another year.

Next came the external beam radiation. These treatments required me to go for radiation every day for five weeks. Fortunately, I got weekends off. Everyday, I would drive about 45 miles round trip to the oncologist office, from work, to quietly lie on a table. They would line up the radiation machine on the targets that they had tattooed on my abdomen and start the procedure. As I lie perfectly still, the large mechanical arm would slowly sweep around my abdomen three times. The process took about a half an hour and was painless. Several times, I found myself dozing off while I lay there.

When we were done, I would drive back to work for the rest of the day. Everything was going well, however, at about 4 weeks into the radiation, I started to have trouble urinating. They said that this was normal and gave me a prescription for some medication to help with the problem. From then on, I had to get up many times during the night to urinate. I was tired all of the time from lack of sleep. I completed the radiation two days before Christmas, just in time to spend time with my family at our cabin up north. We had a great time.  I was glad to be alive. I used that time with my family to thank God, relax and heal.

Finally, it was time for the Brachytherapy radioactive seed implants to be implanted. The video that my doctor gave me to explain the procedure indicated that I would be up and around a few days after the procedure, doing whatever I wanted with no problems.

After the 88 radioactive iodine seeds were implanted in my prostate, I was sent home with a catheter in place. The next day, I went to the doctor’s office to have it removed. The doctor warned me that the area between my legs, where the thirty needle-like tubes were inserted to insert the seeds, would be black and blue from the procedure.

The hardest thing about the procedure was that it left my legs extremely weak and sore. This lasted for several months and made tasks as simple as walking uncomfortable. I also continued to have problems urinating while my prostate continued to heal. Then there were the rectal irritations with occasional minor bleeding. Slowly though, I saw a little improvement everyday until my last appointment with my oncologist, one year after the first hormonal implants were inserted. He implanted the second hormonal implants that I would keep for one more year. It was a great feeling to hear him say that everything looked good and he would see me in a year…a whole year!

So here I am today, a cancer survivor. I’m still dealing with a few of the side effects mentioned above, however, I have learned a lot from my experience. I have learned that I have priorities: God, family/friends, work, church, then everything else. I know now that the relationships we have in this life are so important. I believe that I was spared from death, for a while, to further the relationships with my family and friends. I am now trying to be a better husband, father, son, brother, and neighbor.

I know now that I am not afraid to die. I now live each day not worrying about tomorrow. I have hope and anticipate what God gives me with a smile in my heart. He gives me the inner strength to live each day with joy. So here I stand today, through this fire, my weaknesses have been made strong.

Author:

Paul Norman, Prostate Cancer Survivor 

Mesa, AZ