How I Got Through My 16-Year Journey With Prostate Cancer | HuffPost

This HuffPost Canada page is maintained as part of an online archive.

One of my biggest takeaways from my 16-year journey with this disease is the power of a positive outlook. Facing a diagnosis with advanced prostate cancer can be extremely upsetting and I've been able to stay optimistic by having a strong support system by my side.

By

Retired Canadian living who has been living with advanced prostate cancer for almost 20 years.

Retired Canadian living who has been living with advanced prostate cancer for almost 20 years.

|

This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

skynesher via Getty Images

I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the spring of 1998. My PSA levels were very low so I thought to myself, "well, maybe this isn't so bad." I worked with my doctor to monitor the progression of my condition and keep an eye on it as the years went by. Besides my regular check-ups, everything in my life remained the same.

Then, during one of my regular check-ups in 2010, I was told that my cancer had metastasized -- meaning it had spread to other places of my body. I was shocked. In a single visit, my cancer went from being something that was in the back of my mind, to becoming at the forefront of my life, with unanswered questions consuming my thoughts. Would I be well enough to continue doing the things I loved? Would I be able to still take my boat out fishing? Would I be around to see my grandchildren grow up? What was going to happen next? Despite all the questions and concerns that rumbled in my mind, one thing was for certain -- I wasn't going to let this beat me.

When you're faced with a diagnosis with something like advanced prostate cancer, it's important to identify your support system -- mine included my oncologist, wife and family.

Oncologist visits can often be overwhelming and daunting-- but mine are quite the contrary as my physician has this uncanny ability to make me feel good when I'm feeling down. She has been a source of positivity and hope, and I just knew that we would find a solution.

At the time of my diagnosis, chemotherapy was the only treatment option available to me. During this time, I couldn't walk because of my sore knees and joints, and I was fairly tired. What kept me going was my wife of 50 years, Lilly and my family. I wasn't ready to leave them yet and knew they were as shocked and frightened as I was. I had to keep going and knew that if I did, everything would be alright.

Unfortunately, after several rounds of chemotherapy, we found out that the treatment wasn't working for me and that the cancer was progressing. There was a sense of "what's next?" or even "what's left?" in terms of treatment options. My doctor then put me on an oral treatment, which helped to slow the progression of the cancer. I also felt less fatigued and was able regain some normalcy in my life by taking my boat out to go fishing, spending time watching my grandchildren play hockey and most importantly, being able to take Lilly out on our Sunday drives. We now refer to my cancer as "the sleeping giant." We know it's there but with this treatment it's dormant and hopefully won't wake up again for a long time.

One of my biggest takeaways from my 16-year journey with this disease is the power of a positive outlook. Facing a diagnosis with advanced prostate cancer can be extremely upsetting and I've been able to stay optimistic by having a strong support system by my side. With their help, I have been able to manage this disease for years and most importantly, continue to do the things I love. To learn more about advanced prostate cancer, people can visit Prostate Cancer Matters.

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:

10 Biggest Prostate Cancer Findings So Far

New Advice On Prostate Cancer Screening(01 of10)

This year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended against routine prostate cancer screening for men of all ages, noting its small benefits compared to the harms, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. "We think the benefit is very small," Dr. Michael LeFevre, a member of the task force, told NPR's Shots blog. "Our range is between zero and one prostate cancer death avoided for every thousand men screened," which is minuscule compared to lives saved for screenings for conditions like colorectal cancer. A study published at the beginning of the year in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute seemed to back up the recommendations, noting that routine prostate cancer screening didn't seem to make a difference in the risk of dying from prostate cancer, Reuters reported.However, the American Society of Clinical Oncology issued advice after the USPSTF's recommendation, saying that whether a man gets routine prostate cancer screening should depend on his life expectancy. For example, men who aren't expected to live more than another 10 years should be discouraged from PSA testing, the Associated Press reported. (credit:Alamy)

PSA Testing Could Mean Fewer Cases Of Deadly Prostate Cancer(02 of10)

To add more to the research on prostate cancer screening, a study in the journal Cancer showed that routine PSA testing is linked with 17,000 fewer cases of the deadliest form of prostate cancer."By not using PSA tests in the vast majority of men, you have to accept you are going to increase very serious metastatic disease threefold," study researcher Dr. Edward Messing, M.D., the chief of urology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, told WebMD. Specifically, researchers calculated that without routine prostate cancer screenings through PSA testing, 25,000 men would have been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer (a deadly form of prostate cancer where it has spread beyond the prostate to elsewhere in the body) in 2008, compared with the 8,000 who were actually diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer that year, WebMD reported. (credit:Alamy)

Working The Night Shift Could Raise Your Risk(03 of10)

Working the night shift is associated with a 2.77-times increased risk of prostate cancer, according to a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology.The study, conducted by Canadian researchers included 3,137 men with cancer and 512 men without cancer. The researchers also found that working the night shift raised the risk of lung, colon, bladder, rectal and pancreatic cancers, as well as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. (credit:Alamy)

Surgery May Not Be The Best Option For Everyone With Prostate Cancer(04 of10)

Surgery may not always be the best option for men whose prostate cancer is detected with an elevated PSA (prostate-specific antigen) level, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. For men with early prostate cancer who received a radical prostatectomy (prostate-removal surgery), 47 percent died after 12 years, while 49.9 percent of men who just underwent observation died after 12 years, ABC News reported. Plus 81 percent of men who underwent the radical prostatectomy experienced erectile dysfunction in the two years following, and urinary incontinence plagued 17 percent of the men, WebMD reported.However, ABC News did note that men whose PSA scores were extremely high -- above 10 -- benefited from receiving surgery, indicating that the study may suggest rather which men may benefit most from receiving a radical prostatectomy for their prostate cancer. (credit:Shutterstock)

Aspirin Could Help Prostate Cancer Patients Live Longer(05 of10)

Prostate cancer patients who take aspirin could cut their risk of dying from the disease, Harvard researchers reported this year.The New York Times reported on the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which showed that taking aspirin cut in half the risk of dying of prostate cancer over a decade -- 8 percent of aspirin-nontakers died, compared with 3 percent of aspirin-takers. (credit:Shutterstock)

Circumcision Could Affect Risk(06 of10)

Circumcision -- or the removal of a man's foreskin before he has sex for the first time -- is linked with a lower risk of developing prostate cancer, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center scientists found this year.The findings, published in the journal Cancer, shows that prostate cancer risk for men who are circumcised before the first time they have sex is 15 percent lower, compared with uncircumcised men. While Dr. Andrew Freedman, who is on the American Academy of Pediatrics' circumcision task force but was not involved in the study, found the findings thought-provoking, he told HuffPost in an earlier article that "this kind of epidemiological research -- how A affects B, and B affects C -- is very difficult to do and makes it very difficult to account for confounding variables." (credit:Alamy)

Pan-Fried Meat Could Raise Risk(07 of10)

Including pan-fried meat in your weekly meal rotations is linked with a higher risk of prostate cancer, University of Southern California researchers found. Specifically, men who eat one-and-a-half servings of red meat that's been pan-fried each week have a 30 percent increased risk of advanced prostate cancer. And men who eat two-and-a-half servings of the food have a 40 percent increased risk. Hamburger meat in particular -- compared with a red meat like steak -- seemed linked with the increased risk, according to the Carcinogenesis study. And while not a red meat, pan-fried poultry also seemed linked with the increased prostate cancer risk (while baked poultry was associated with a lower prostate cancer risk). (credit:Shutterstock)

Genetic 'Signatures' Could Predict Aggressive Disease(08 of10)

Genes could hold a clue to who will go on to develop aggressive prostate cancer, researchers found this year. Reuters reported on the Lancet Oncology study, showing aggressive tumors might be able to be predicted by two genetic "signatures":

Researchers in Britain and the United States found that by reading the patterns of genes switched on and off in blood cells, they could accurately detect which advanced prostate cancer patients had the worst survival rates.

(credit:Alamy)

Blood Pressure Could Affect Risk Of Dying From Prostate Cancer(09 of10)

The risk of dying from prostate cancer is higher if you also have high blood pressure, European researchers found.Specifically, hypertension was linked with a 62 percent increased risk of dying for people with prostate cancer. "When we looked to see if the metabolic factors are related to an increased risk of getting or dying from prostate cancer we found a relationship with death from the disease and high blood pressure," study researcher Christel Haggstrom, of Umea University, told HuffPost UK. "There was also a link to high BMI but blood pressure had the strongest association to increased risk. The results for BMI are in line with previous findings in large studies." (credit:Shutterstock)

Green Tea Is Good(10 of10)

Research presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research this year showed that drinking green tea could help ward off inflammation in men with prostate cancer who are about to undergo prostate-removal surgery. "Our study showed that drinking six cups of green tea affected biomarkers in prostate tissue at the time of surgery," study researcher Susanne M. Henning, Ph.D., R.D., of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles, said in a statement. "This research offers new insights into the mechanisms by which green tea consumption may reduce the risk for prostate cancer by opposing processes such as inflammation, which are associated with prostate cancer growth." (credit:Alamy)

Related

advanced-prostate-cancer cancer living Men's Health metastatic prostate cancer

Suggest a correction

-- This HuffPost Canada page is maintained as part of an online archive. If you have questions or concerns, please check our FAQ or contact support@huffpost.com.

From Our Partner