My column on marionstar.com today

 Here is the column I published in The Marion Star today and on marionstar.com:
Learn from my experience: See your doctor regularly

When I was 41, I had a blood test returned that indicated that I might have prostate cancer. No one was too concerned.

One doctor explained that the blood test was the only factor against me. My age and family history, which are very important, suggested that cancer was not a great possibility.

We kept testing, however, and eventually it was determined that I did have cancer.

I did what my doctors suggested and had surgery to remove my prostate in November of 2001.I was glad I caught the cancer early, before it had a chance to spread, and I was glad I worked at a newspaper.

Until I had a prostate specific antigen test (PSA), I had never heard of one. I had read plenty of articles about prostate cancer. But, I wasn't paying attention. Cancer happened to other people and prostate cancer was an old man's disease.

Since my diagnosis, I have made it a practice to write at least one column a year urging other men to have physicals. I am not arguing for blanket prostate cancer screenings. I am arguing for a healthy relationship with your family physician. Or at least having a family physician.

Having a good relationship with my family physician very likely saved my life.

At the Star, we try very hard to have a locally written editorial each day.

We try to make the topic local and relevant. Sometimes that's a tall order.

Personally, I could write an editorial a day about litter and one way streets, but we don't want to brow beat. Often we just want to spark conversation or pat somebody on the back.

Early in March I was stumped for a topic, when I read a press release on the visit of a giant replica of a colon to a nearby shopping mall.

March is Colorectal Cancer Month. It is also Women's History month and no doubt each day in March has been indicated by someone somewhere as national something-or-other day.

Honestly, if it is not National Muffin Day, it's Bring Your Cat to Work Day.

Colorectal cancer, like prostate cancer, was something that I have read and heard a lot about over the years. It seemed important enough to merit an editorial urging people to be alert to symptoms and to see their doctors if they suspected anything.

When I started typing a list of symptoms into the editorial I started to notice a disturbing trend.

I had a yes answer for each symptom except, of course, the one for unexplained weight loss.

I had been ignoring them, thinking it was a diet thing and that it would pass when I got over my current pierogi and hot dog kick.

I talked to my wife, she called the doctor, we scheduled a colonoscopy and now I am undergoing treatment for rectal cancer.

In the process of diagnosing the rectal cancer we discovered another suspicious mass on one of my kidneys. The diagnosis is still out on that one but it is likely cancer as well.

We are not too alarmed. We have good, aggressive doctors and again, we have caught this one fairly early.

But a day doesn't go by that I don't think about that editorial and about how I was too ignorant to act on what now seem like obvious symptoms.

I am so glad I work for a newspaper. The people I work for are kind and understanding and we have decent insurance.

Most importantly, however, it gives me a chance to use this space to urge all of you to make sure you have a healthy and regular relationship with your doctor. Make sure you are paying attention to your body and are not afraid to ask questions.

Cancer is an awful disease, but it can be beaten. You have to catch it early and you have to be aggressive.

Before summer is over I expect to be back to normal.

And now I know the topic of at least two columns per year.

Getting Ready for Surgery

It was a busy year for me.

My daughter, Lucy, was approaching her first birthday.

I had been put in charge of the copy desk just as we were transitioning to a new software program and almost as soon as that was complete they made me the online editor, again, just as we were beginning to use a new software system.

Shortly before my final prostate cancer diagnosis, the managing editor phoned me to tell me that somebody had flown a plane into the World Trade Center and could I come in to work a little early to post some stories and coordinate our Web coverage.

I remember telling Mary that I thought I would be gone for an hour and that I would come back for lunch before going in for my usual evening shift.

I ended up staying longer than an hour.

It was exactly nine days after the attack when I was told I had cancer.

I might have mentioned before that I got the news on my birthday which I share with Lucy.

Prostate cancer is, for the most part, an old man's disease. When I started looking around for information on fertility after prostate cancer, I didn't find much. It is, really not much of an issue.

Mainly because, as I was soon to find out, there is not much in the way of fertility after prostate cancer.

The prostate is, of course, where your semen is made. The sperm come from your testes but they have to have some sort of medium to get to where they gotta go and that is where the prostate comes in. No prostate, no semen, no transport for the sperms.

We went to see the urologist with Lucy in tow shortly after he called with the diagnosis.

I had a bunch of questions, but I was already sure that the only course for me was a radical prostectomy. Any other treatment such as radiation, at the time, only bought you about 12 years before returning. My plan was to live much more than 12 years. The radical surgery eliminates the problem.

"Is this your only child?" the doc asked us?

"If you want to have more, you have to bank some sperm," he added.

So, three minutes after finishing our consultation with him and setting up surgery dates we were across the street at the fertility clinic finding out about the storage of sperm.

It's a fairly simple process. You pay about $1,000, go into a room with some magazines and they send your essence off to Atlanta where it is kept frozen until you call for it.

Oh, and every year they send you a bill for another year's storage.

The surgery was scheduled for Nov. 13. I remember one friend wondering about how serious they were, if they were going to wait almost two months to do the work.

One reason for the delay was that the doctor wanted me to bank my own blood. Another reason is just that there are so many things you have to take care of.

One was getting an HIV test. You can't bank sperm unless you have an HIV test. The urologist ordered the test as part of my pre-surgery work-up although it is usually not a part of that.

Our insurance would pay nothing for fertility treatments and that was his little way of helping us out.

What it meant to me was that every time someone looked at my chart they saw that I had had an HIV test and they were required to counsel as to the results. I got the little boilerplate spiel at least three times on the morning of my surgery.

Now they are doing robotic keyhole prostate surgery, but way back then in 2001, it was lay 'em out on the table and split 'em open abdominal surgery.

I shaved my head before the surgery, because I knew I was going to spend at least three days in the hospital and I didn't want to look like Billy Bibbet from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

The doctor told me later that his heart leapt when he walked into the operating room because he didn't recognize me with my bald head and thought he was in the wrong place.

I worked until the day before my surgery. That last day I was mostly sending e-mails telling people what to do while I was away.

We actually had a new editor have her first day in the newsroom on my last day.

"You're having surgery tomorrow?" she asked me. "What are you doing here? Aren't you scared?"

I think I was more afraid that they would find out that they didn't really need me at the newspaper. And, truthfully, I was scared that if I made a big weepy deal of this, other guys I cared about would avoid testing. I didn't want that.

My parents came to Asheville to stay with Lucy while Mary took me to the hospital. It was very early in the morning and I only remember the highlights – putting hosiery on my legs, being visited by a nun, getting counseled for my HIV test.

The next thing I knew I was in recovery.

It is sad to say that I have a lot of experience waking up from being anesthetized, but I do. And, I always wake up talking – I am sure I am always saying something stupid.