#101: Welcome to Mark's Prostate Cancer Experience

This is my welcome episode, where I introduce myself as someone who was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer in 2015, and so far have been living a normal life after surgery.  There are many details of this disease that men seem to not be able to find answers for, and I am here to help share my own experiences.  1 in 44 men will die from Prostate Cancer, but the good news is that this disease is completely curable.  The trick is to detect it early, and act on it quickly.

Transcript

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This podcast deals with prostate cancer, surgery, medication and other medical topics. The host is a prostate cancer survivor who is recounting his experience with treatment. It is not a medical professional and you should not use his commentary as medical advice. Please always consult a medical professional when learning about and understanding prostate cancer or any other disease.

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Welcome welcome, welcome. This is the first episode of my new podcast, which is a continuation of my video series on YouTube called Mark's Prostate Cancer Experience. I'm in this beautiful studio. I have great sound, I have great editing, and I thought it was probably time for me to take

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this to the next level.

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meaning

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going above and beyond, just shooting YouTube videos on my iPhone and doing something a little more professional.

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something that also will allow me to bring in guest speakers from time to time. Anyways, so,

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I do welcome you, but just to just to back up a little bit. Back in 2015, I was 51 years old and I learned that I had prostate cancer.

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and it was quite a shock, as you can imagine, to somebody in his young 50s.

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And I wasn't quite sure how to handle the news initially. I tried to do a lot of research, try to speak to a lot of people, but I really found that there

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wasn't a lot of information out there that would really comfort me and help me understand what I was about to go through. The doctors are great.

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they're very good at detecting and helping to understand when a man is being diagnosed with prostate cancer, but unfortunately, their job ends there in that they're not necessarily there to comfort you or help you embrace what's about to happen to your body or what could happen to your body. But nonetheless, they do a great job surgically. And,

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I was very lucky and things worked out very well for me.

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But anyway, I wanted to take a few steps back, back to 2015 and the great thing about a podcast like this is that,

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it really gives me the chance to sit in a relaxed environment and go through things in great detail and think back to what was going through my head in 2015. And now that it's 2024, would I have changed anything?

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Would I have done things any differently?

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and so this is going to be a series that I will keep up to date over,

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quite a long period of time. This is the first episode I'm hoping to be able to podcast at least every two weeks, but maybe in the beginning I'll do something monthly and then maybe get into something more frequently.

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I am working on other podcasts for my business and other enterprises that I'm in, so the studio really makes it,

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a nice, convenient place to sit down and, just relax and,

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gather my thoughts. So let's go back to 2015.

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I was, like many of you who may be listening to this,

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I was noticing a rise in my PSA, and first it was in the high threes and then the low fours, and then it got to about 4.5.

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Nothing crazy, but,

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still enough to

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create a bit of a concern or at least want to have it diagnosed.

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and try to understand where this is coming from.

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It also is,

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no great surprise that I had done a DNA test,

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even back in 2015, even prior to that, 23 and me was around and they were doing some medical predictions with some of the DNA matching and,

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my DNA did come up with some markers for prostate cancer.

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There had never been prostate cancer in my family as far as I knew. But,

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it was sort of in the back of my head that maybe this is something I would have to deal with at some point, but I decided that I would start to take some steps to try to figure out if I indeed had the disease, or if I was likely to get it at some point in the future.

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So I had a biopsy

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and the biopsy came back positive, which,

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didn't really surprise me. But I do remember and for those of you that have gone through the disease or are going through it,

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you'll remember the moment that that biopsy result is presented to you, because it is

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that one time where you're being told, guess where you have it,

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And I think the thing that went through my mind at the time was,

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you know, we all dread that day where potentially we're diagnosed with cancer and at the time, cancer for me was cancer, whether it was prostate cancer or,

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breast cancer, skin cancer, pancreatic cancer, cancer was always that dreaded word you didn't want to hear.

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Because in past years, getting cancer usually increased the likelihood

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that your life would end sooner than you expected. So there's always that fear about what does this mean? What does this mean in terms of my longevity, in terms of my life? So,

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I embrace it at the point in time. And,

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a lot of men who are in the same situation don't quite know what to do with it.

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My first reaction? Well, there was a little bit of shock, but I think it was kind of in the back of my mind expected. I mean, when you go to have a biopsy, you do it because you think maybe there's something going on there. So when it was determined that I had it,

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there was sort of that moment that you pause.

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But

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I'm a real fighter. I don't wallow in things that I really can't control. And this was something I felt at the time I could control and

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more so than just control it. I was going to beat it. I was going to fight it, I was going to beat it, and I was going to live a full life.

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And that was my intent at the time. And,

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it still is actually,

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there's nothing that will stop me from wanting to live a long a life as possible. And so if medical science provides an answer, well, that's something that we're going to go ahead and

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we're going to chase. Of course, the next big question that came up was, how do you treat prostate cancer?

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And,

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back in 2015, which wasn't that long ago,

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but we've learned a lot since then.

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it was going to be a matter of either having my prostate removed, the dreaded prostatectomy, or going through radiation or doing nothing at all.

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trying to wait and see what happens. So I had done some research and,

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even at the time, there was a lot of research that suggested if you had your prostate removed or if you had radiation, the odds of survival,

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the odds of getting rid of it were pretty good.

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but there was an additional associated risk with radiation. And, and the risk was if they radiate the prostate and it returns at some point in time, it's very difficult, if not impossible, to then have surgery. On the other hand, if you have surgery, you have your prostate removed and prostate cancer does come back.

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radiation is and was thought to be a great,

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plan B, so they would call it salvage radiation if the prostate cancer returned down the road a little bit.

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And then in some cases where some men had higher Gleason scores and were assumed to be higher risk for recurrence, they did. I think it's called adjuvant radiation, which basically it's just radiation. But it's it's done very close to surgery. So they do the surgery and then they rate it afterwards. But I decided and it was a very quick decision that I was going to have my prostate removed.

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And I started doing research into doctors.

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I was living in Miami at the time and I was consulting with some of my Miami surgeons, but at the time,

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I thought maybe,

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I should try to find somebody who

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does this,

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several times a week with thousands and thousands of surgeries under his belt.

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And so through a series of investigations and asking around and looking around,

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I met up with Doctor David, Samadi who runs a practice in New York City, and at the time, he was,

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performing surgeries out of Lenox Hill Hospital.

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I

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had,

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decided, well, this is the guy that really seems to have a great success story.

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I did speak to some of the former patients of Doctor Somebody who seemed to have very good outcomes. And so I made plans to go ahead and do that. So that would mean moving up to New York City for about 10 to 14 days,

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having the surgery, doing some of my recovery there. And then

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at some point going back to Miami and starting my full recovery.

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So that's kind of what I did.

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Part of my decision process at the time was to,

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really figure out what was the best way to not only beat the cancer, but to also mitigate or eliminate the possibility of severe side effects. And when your prostate is removed,

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There are two side effects that could occur, and are things that we see more than other side effects, one of them being a loss of continence. So that is when you have to urinate. Your prostate

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currently is a valve that helps control urine flow. When the prostate is gone, that control mechanism is also gone.

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but there is a second one. And your pelvic floor, your sphincter actually is a controlling mechanism. So if the surgery goes well and you're in relatively good shape, then you should be able to continue to control urine flow, although that's not always the case. And there are a number of reasons why somebody after surgery may find that they,

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they don't have that control either temporarily or permanently.

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And I have spoken to men in different camps. So that's one concern that men have with the surgery. Another concern, which is for many a greater concern is the loss of erectile function. So if you can imagine your prostate,

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does your, the function of your prostate. It is it is a sexual gland and it controls,

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not only semen flow but the nerves that are around that are, well, control erections.

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So if you imagine this is going to be removed, the nerves

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that allow your brain to communicate to your sexual area, your penis,

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can get disrupted. So those are, those are really the the two biggies that people worry about.

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will I wear diapers for the rest of my life? Is this the end of my sex life?

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Is it the end of erections? And,

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the good news is, in today's is modern world of medicine and equipment, we have,

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an amazing tool called the Da Vinci robot, which is a very precise and very specific

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surgery tool. And so if the surgery is done properly and,

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I would say most surgeons that use the da Vinci are

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quite skilled.

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They know what they're doing.

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prior to the robot, they would,

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they would do the surgery using scopes and tools and prods. And so it was not as precise. But,

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surprisingly, a lot of surgeries were very successful, but a lot were not. So your odds of regaining confidence and erectile function using a da Vinci method,

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is quite high, but you're not out of the ballpark just yet, because there are some things that you may not have control over.

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And

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that's the big worry. And that's what fears,

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a lot of men. I was quite lucky.

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very lucky, as a matter of fact.

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I think my choice of Doctor Smarty was a good one, because he has a method of removing the prostate that really tries to retain the nerves as much as possible. And in my case,

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I had almost full continence,

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after surgery and erectile function returned within just a couple of months.

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It really wasn't that big of a deal for me, but I was one of the lucky ones.

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and,

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I shouldn't say there are a lot of lucky ones. There really are. But I did find out over the years speaking to hundreds if not thousands of men and looking at their stories, looking at what they did to prepare for surgery, looking at how they treated the bodies after surgery, their choice of surgeon,

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diet, a lot of different things.

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But there are some patterns that appear to me

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to be consistent with talking to a lot of men.

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I think it's important to prepare yourself properly for surgery and also to keep yourself in as best shape as possible.

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my journey

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has been quite successful. And I started a Facebook group not too long after I started shooting videos. And during my surgery, I did a video every day. And if you look on my YouTube channel, you'll see them documented. I think it's episode one or episode two, etc. there.

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There's quite a few of them. And so during the week of surgery, I wanted to capture what I was going through prior to the surgery

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Immediately afterwards, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know if the surgery would hurt or what I would feel like afterwards.

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and in the end, the surgery itself wasn't so horrible.

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The recovery wasn't that bad. There's certainly some soreness and it's a very quick stay in the hospital. So

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the real challenge.

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after surgery is getting your body back in shape. And,

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I'll have a whole episode on how to recover erectile function. At least it's an approach that I took that maybe doesn't work for everybody, but it certainly worked for me.

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And the purpose of starting this podcast series is to go back to some of the older videos that I recorded and probably spend a little more time on the different topics. So, you know, there are things about the catheter people want to know during surgery. They want to know about different medications they take,

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after surgery, you have a catheter in your body for about a week.

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So men want to know what that's going to be like.

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I expected the worst. And,

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listen, I've had better weeks of my life, but it really, it wasn't the worst week of my life. It it was something that I found I could deal with, and,

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now I can share it with others and help them understand what they're about to expect if they're going to go into surgery as well.

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So,

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the years

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have flown,

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and

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the years that follow you after surgery or even after radiation, depending

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what your treatment is, you want to keep testing your PSA every three months and every six months and every year. And for me, after about my fifth year, my PSA started to rise again. And,

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that is something that I knew could always happen, but it was something that I wasn't expecting to happen.

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And I frankly thought I'd beat this for good so that kind of started the

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the second chapter in this whole experience. I

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actually I'm entering a third chapter soon, and I'll tell you what that's all about. But what started to happen is there was a very slow and gradual PSA rise. Now, the thing about PSA is

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PSA is only produced by the prostate or prostate cancer.

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So if you've had surgery or you've had radiation, the idea is that the eradicate

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prostate cancer cells, but the prostate can always continue to produce PSA. If you've had a prostatectomy where the prostate is

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removed, they're expecting to see,

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0A0 score on PSA or what they call undetectable. And so

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over a period of time, if there's a very quick recurrence, if you've had surgery and your PSA starts to rise in six months or eight months or even 12 months and it starts rising quickly,

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they look at how quickly it doubles in value.

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So the doubling time is the very critical number. If it doubles very quickly,

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within six months, eight months, then,

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the moment you hit about 0.2,

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what they call NGS per milliliter,

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then they usually say that you've had a biochemical recurrence. And what that really means is

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there's been a recurrence of prostate cancer.

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And so when your prostate was removed, there was likely some tissue left behind. You know, when they pull the prostate out, it doesn't come out like

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the pit of an avocado comes out.

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there's tissue there. And so if the, if the cancer is contained completely within the tissue, then the prostate comes out.

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You should be pretty good. But there is something which they call a positive, a margin. And, which is what I had. And and that is when they pull the prostate out. And they later examined it under a microscope for the pathology report, they will tell you if they found evidence of prostate cancer near the edges of the prostate.

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And if that's the case, there's always a chance a little bit of that cancer got left behind. And that's what you keep looking for for the years that follow your surgery. But the thing is,

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it can take years.

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So think of these as little seedlings and

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so,

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so for me, after about my fifth year, my PSA started to rise, but very slowly,

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And it did hit 0.20 at some point, which was about three years ago. And

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then it dropped a little bit, you know, it kind of bounced around a little bit. So what's unknown at that point because so many years had passed by.

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what's unknown is whether this rise in PSA is because of benign tissue that's not cancerous or whether the cancer cells have really started to appear again and start to grow.

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And the funny thing about the the science,

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and the detection of prostate cancer is other than PSA testing and biopsy, of course,

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they really can't tell you where it's coming from or that it's cancerous. They just know that the number is higher and that in all likelihood arise.

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And PSA comes from just that, from a recurrence of prostate

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cancer cells. But like I said, it could very well be just benign tissue. That is throwing a little bit of PSA

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off. That's why the the number value can be somewhat important.

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so in my case

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my PSA started a rise. And

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it hit about 0.3.

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The rise from point 2 to 0.3 was about a year and a half. So still very slow. And you know, I certainly had a false hope that maybe it's just benign tissue that's growing is a prostate cancer. I don't know who can say, but there is a test now that has come out and it's called it's a Pet scan.

00:18:46:00 - 00:18:52:25
Speaker 1
It's a form of a Pet scan, and it's called a PSA polarity test. And this is the gold standard now.

00:18:52:25 - 00:18:55:06
Speaker 1
it's a Pet scan where they,

00:18:55:06 - 00:19:09:20
Speaker 1
they inject a radioactive material into your body. And this material is very specific for prostate cancer. So essentially what they do is they flood your body with this material, and then they scan it with a CT type machine.

00:19:09:22 - 00:19:20:21
Speaker 1
And if there's evidence of prostate cancer anywhere in your body, it will actually light up in this report. So think of your whole body as being scanned. And little

00:19:20:21 - 00:19:26:29
Speaker 1
lit areas that may appear are pretty much determined to have prostate cancer.

00:19:26:29 - 00:19:35:20
Speaker 1
The difficulty with this test is if prostate cancer is very young, if it's if you if you have a PSA, but let's say under 1.0,

00:19:35:20 - 00:19:40:05
Speaker 1
there is always a chance that even a PSA Pet scan won't pick it up because

00:19:40:05 - 00:19:42:09
Speaker 1
it's still too small to pick up.

00:19:42:12 - 00:19:57:16
Speaker 1
So this type of a scan is very effective. If prostate cancer has started to metastasize in your body, and a lot of times prostate cancer just loves to find spots and bones. And that's where bone cancer starts unfortunately.

00:19:57:16 - 00:20:01:20
Speaker 1
and that can be pretty severe. Even though the methods of treating

00:20:01:20 - 00:20:06:25
Speaker 1
metastatic prostate cancer having improved so much just in the last couple of years.

00:20:06:27 - 00:20:11:04
Speaker 1
But anyway, I had this test and it, it showed up,

00:20:11:04 - 00:20:13:06
Speaker 1
everything looked clear, which was a

00:20:13:06 - 00:20:33:00
Speaker 1
a relief to me, but it showed up something in one of my ribs and it was a some kind of a lesion that they weren't it wasn't clear what it was. And we started to investigate a little bit further. But the irony was there was nothing showing up in my pelvic area, which is where you expect to see prostate cancer occur.

00:20:33:02 - 00:20:35:06
Speaker 1
But there was something in the,

00:20:35:06 - 00:20:56:06
Speaker 1
in that rib. The ninth rib, to be exact. So we had to figure out what was happening. And and this this was last year. This was early 2023, late 2022. We decided as a first step to do a bone biopsy just to kind of get in there and see what's happening. And I'd never had a bone biopsy before,

00:20:56:06 - 00:20:56:28
Speaker 1
it didn't hurt.

00:20:56:28 - 00:21:06:08
Speaker 1
It was something that was done as an outpatient procedure, very simple. And the bone biopsy came back negative. So,

00:21:06:08 - 00:21:18:12
Speaker 1
I wasn't hoping for it to be positive because that would mean something had metastasized. But anyway, the fact that was negative was a relief. In a strange way, I was disappointed because

00:21:18:12 - 00:21:22:07
Speaker 1
since that test was negative, we still don't know what's going on with my body.

00:21:22:07 - 00:21:33:20
Speaker 1
We don't know where this PSA is coming from. So I decided even though the biopsy was negative, I decided I would try to,

00:21:33:20 - 00:21:38:23
Speaker 1
radiated or I would go for radiation just of the rib area, and which is a lot easier,

00:21:38:23 - 00:21:44:16
Speaker 1
when you do full blown salvage radiation of the prostate bed, that's a it's a pretty big ordeal.

00:21:44:18 - 00:21:53:00
Speaker 1
But we decided I would try to radiate the rib, and I found a proton center that I went to and proton technology for radiation.

00:21:53:00 - 00:22:04:25
Speaker 1
it's just amazing of how it works, but I won't get into the specifics. Maybe on a different podcast, I'll talk about radiation and what the different methods are and what you should be looking at for prostate cancer.

00:22:04:28 - 00:22:05:10
Speaker 1
But,

00:22:05:10 - 00:22:07:02
Speaker 1
we did radiate. We did five sessions.

00:22:07:02 - 00:22:09:24
Speaker 1
it wasn't horrible. I didn't feel anything. I

00:22:09:24 - 00:22:13:03
Speaker 1
could never even have told you that I hadn't because,

00:22:13:03 - 00:22:21:21
Speaker 1
like I said, there was no sensation whatsoever. And then once you radiate prostate cancer cells, the PSA doesn't drop immediately.

00:22:21:21 - 00:22:23:26
Speaker 1
what radiation does?

00:22:23:26 - 00:22:24:26
Speaker 1
is it

00:22:24:26 - 00:22:28:28
Speaker 1
disables the prostate cancer cells from replicating.

00:22:29:00 - 00:22:29:07
Speaker 1
So

00:22:29:07 - 00:22:34:07
Speaker 1
after radiation anywhere in your body, quite frankly, the prostate cancer,

00:22:34:07 - 00:22:50:07
Speaker 1
if it's there, will continue to produce PSA. But over a period of three, six, even nine months, you should expect to see the PSA drop. And if the PSA drops even to non detectable then you know you got it. So

00:22:50:07 - 00:22:51:17
Speaker 1
that's one

00:22:51:17 - 00:22:52:17
Speaker 1
great triumph

00:22:52:17 - 00:22:53:16
Speaker 1
to look for.

00:22:53:18 - 00:23:00:15
Speaker 1
But in my case I had the radiation that was January of 2023. And my PSA dropped a little bit.

00:23:00:15 - 00:23:12:18
Speaker 1
it got as high as 0.32 came down to 0.28. But then we settled back at .35 and then a year later came up to 0.4. So the

00:23:12:18 - 00:23:20:06
Speaker 1
the rib apparently was not the issue. And what they believe it is in the end is probably just some trauma.

00:23:20:06 - 00:23:35:21
Speaker 1
the fact that my rib was lighting up and the PSA test was a result of I guess I had traumatized my rib at some point and just had not knowing it. And it just it's always been that way. So anyway, the good thing is I have good ribs, good bone structure, I guess.

00:23:35:21 - 00:23:39:18
Speaker 1
but that brings me up to more recent times where,

00:23:39:18 - 00:23:47:29
Speaker 1
at a PSA 0.40, I did have another PSA Pet scan just to see where I am.

00:23:47:29 - 00:23:48:21
Speaker 1
and,

00:23:48:21 - 00:23:49:01
Speaker 1
it

00:23:49:01 - 00:23:53:08
Speaker 1
was exactly the same as the one I had back in, in,

00:23:53:08 - 00:24:01:11
Speaker 1
2022 is when the first PSA was done. So nothing has progressed as far as PSA, Pet scan.

00:24:01:11 - 00:24:06:20
Speaker 1
I guess the positive side of all this is that since nothing is showing up in the PSA has been

00:24:06:20 - 00:24:09:16
Speaker 1
slow moving, even though it's hit 0.40.

00:24:09:19 - 00:24:12:02
Speaker 1
Whatever could be happening to me,

00:24:12:02 - 00:24:27:14
Speaker 1
would be very low grade, very slow moving, but nonetheless, it's there. And I have to make a decision on what it is that I do, because on one hand, I can wait. And surprisingly, even at a point for PSA reading

00:24:27:14 - 00:24:31:14
Speaker 1
in general, the thought of the professionals,

00:24:31:14 - 00:24:40:25
Speaker 1
the doctors is that there's a sign that something is kind of brewing, but it's not dangerous enough yet where I have to act right away,

00:24:40:25 - 00:24:46:11
Speaker 1
Nothing's going to change within a month. But things could change within six months or a year.

00:24:46:11 - 00:24:59:23
Speaker 1
if I did absolutely nothing and just let nature take its course, then the time to go from point four to point six to point 8 to 1.0 and longer and longer,

00:24:59:23 - 00:25:01:07
Speaker 1
it could be years.

00:25:01:07 - 00:25:01:26
Speaker 1
and

00:25:01:26 - 00:25:07:06
Speaker 1
one course of action in a situation like mine is to do absolutely nothing.

00:25:07:08 - 00:25:07:29
Speaker 1
I feel great.

00:25:07:29 - 00:25:09:10
Speaker 1
in the best shape of my life

00:25:09:10 - 00:25:14:26
Speaker 1
But if I did absolutely nothing, then I could potentially,

00:25:14:26 - 00:25:16:24
Speaker 1
I don't know if I would live this out because,

00:25:16:24 - 00:25:24:29
Speaker 1
I turned 60 this year in May, so if I turned 60 and this buys me 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 years,

00:25:24:29 - 00:25:26:06
Speaker 1
you know, what does that look like?

00:25:26:06 - 00:25:26:11
Speaker 1
And

00:25:26:11 - 00:25:32:01
Speaker 1
that's not a solution for me. I, you know, I'm not going to just let this sort of run its course. And,

00:25:32:01 - 00:25:45:07
Speaker 1
know that I have a couple good years ahead of me, and then whatever happens next happens. The problem is, once prostate cancer mustache disguises, you just never know what the effects are going to be.

00:25:45:07 - 00:25:55:08
Speaker 1
And a lot of people that have died from prostate cancer, and you've seen a lot of people in the news, some famous people have been dying recently are people they just never got treated in the first place. And,

00:25:55:08 - 00:25:57:06
Speaker 1
the cancer just runs amuck with the body. And

00:25:57:06 - 00:26:08:09
Speaker 1
it's not a pleasant scene. There are a lot of hormone therapies that have become available just in the last couple of years that make living with metastatic prostate cancer a lot easier.

00:26:08:09 - 00:26:14:19
Speaker 1
But I really don't want to be in that position. So the obvious next choice then is,

00:26:14:19 - 00:26:23:05
Speaker 1
what many people would do in my situation is seek out radiation. And so the course that I'm on right now is to,

00:26:23:05 - 00:26:45:13
Speaker 1
possibly this summer, go through 39 sessions of proton radiation. And since we believe the bones are clear and that the prostate cancer really most likely is isolated down to the prostate bed area, the idea is to do a full radiation program of the prostate bed,

00:26:45:13 - 00:26:47:19
Speaker 1
and the lymph nodes as well.

00:26:47:19 - 00:26:52:01
Speaker 1
And if they're successful, then this is the end of that journey.

00:26:52:01 - 00:26:55:23
Speaker 1
it gets eradicated for life, and then it's just on to,

00:26:55:23 - 00:26:57:02
Speaker 1
living a very long life.

00:26:57:02 - 00:27:00:25
Speaker 1
Hopefully, of course, along with radiation.

00:27:00:28 - 00:27:03:02
Speaker 1
there is damage to the body.

00:27:03:02 - 00:27:03:19
Speaker 1
and

00:27:03:19 - 00:27:10:00
Speaker 1
if you have radiation for prostate cancer, you really should go on an ADT.

00:27:10:00 - 00:27:13:00
Speaker 1
that's, androgen deprivation therapy.

00:27:13:00 - 00:27:15:22
Speaker 1
like Lupron and or all of or other things.

00:27:15:22 - 00:27:15:27
Speaker 1
And

00:27:15:27 - 00:27:17:17
Speaker 1
these medications

00:27:17:17 - 00:27:35:17
Speaker 1
stops all the testosterone in your body from being produced. And prostate cancer cells live on testosterone only. That's their main source of fuel. So if you deprive the body from testosterone, the cells don't grow. But more importantly, if you're getting radiation,

00:27:35:17 - 00:27:45:25
Speaker 1
if the testosterone has been mostly removed from your body, the prostate cancer cells apparently are much more receptive to radiation when they're starved in that way.

00:27:45:27 - 00:27:53:11
Speaker 1
So typically, if you're going to go through radiation, you'll do two months of hormone therapy. Lupron is the one you hear mostly.

00:27:53:11 - 00:28:01:04
Speaker 1
then you have your 6 to 8 weeks of radiation, and then afterwards you stay on the Lupron for another two months.

00:28:01:04 - 00:28:04:22
Speaker 1
the Lupron itself or any ADT you're going to use

00:28:04:22 - 00:28:06:17
Speaker 1
wreaks havoc on the body.

00:28:06:20 - 00:28:10:04
Speaker 1
You get hot flashes, zero libido.

00:28:10:04 - 00:28:12:06
Speaker 1
no sex drive, loss of,

00:28:12:06 - 00:28:15:22
Speaker 1
muscle mass, loss of bone density. I can go on and on

00:28:15:22 - 00:28:16:19
Speaker 1
Mood swings,

00:28:16:19 - 00:28:18:13
Speaker 1
crazy crazy stuff.

00:28:18:13 - 00:28:26:19
Speaker 1
these are mitigated a little bit, from what I understand, by keeping your body healthy and exercised whenever you can. But in any case,

00:28:26:19 - 00:28:29:15
Speaker 1
anyone that's going to go on a radiation regimen

00:28:29:15 - 00:28:33:26
Speaker 1
for recurrence in my particular case is going to have six months of,

00:28:33:26 - 00:28:38:24
Speaker 1
maybe not the best months of their lives, but it's all for the greater cause.

00:28:38:24 - 00:28:40:11
Speaker 1
I. Yeah. So anyways, so

00:28:40:11 - 00:28:44:27
Speaker 1
that's what is potentially in the, in the near future for me. And

00:28:44:27 - 00:28:46:27
Speaker 1
as that experience starts

00:28:46:27 - 00:28:54:21
Speaker 1
I will start then a complete third chapter in all of my videos, and also here in podcasting to,

00:28:54:21 - 00:28:58:01
Speaker 1
document what I will be going through

00:28:58:01 - 00:29:02:04
Speaker 1
from the ADT to the radiation to the follow up as well.

00:29:02:04 - 00:29:07:16
Speaker 1
And so if there are any of you who potentially will be in a similar situation,

00:29:07:16 - 00:29:09:29
Speaker 1
maybe by stepping through my

00:29:09:29 - 00:29:16:26
Speaker 1
foot prints, if you will, you will be a little more at ease as to what you're about to go through. But it's not easy.

00:29:16:26 - 00:29:20:01
Speaker 1
there's a lot of a lot of worse things I could think of.

00:29:20:04 - 00:29:24:19
Speaker 1
One would have to go through in our lives with medical,

00:29:24:19 - 00:29:26:22
Speaker 1
issues that come up in disease. So,

00:29:26:22 - 00:29:27:28
Speaker 1
if this is the worst that I

00:29:27:28 - 00:29:31:25
Speaker 1
have to go through, it's just something that I'll have to work with and deal with and

00:29:31:25 - 00:29:38:23
Speaker 1
hope for the best. And there is also the possibility that even after radiation, maybe that wasn't the problem, you know?

00:29:38:23 - 00:29:39:17
Speaker 1
So,

00:29:39:17 - 00:29:43:20
Speaker 1
I have many years to look forward to, keeping an eye on this.

00:29:43:20 - 00:29:54:00
Speaker 1
you have radiation after surgery, if there is a recurrence, then you pretty much are on hormone therapy for the rest of your life. And, you know, doesn't it sound wonderful?

00:29:54:00 - 00:29:57:00
Speaker 1
Anyway, I think the most important thing of all of this is,

00:29:57:00 - 00:29:57:16
Speaker 1
if,

00:29:57:16 - 00:30:00:12
Speaker 1
like myself, you're someone who believes in,

00:30:00:12 - 00:30:08:29
Speaker 1
in survival and being alive for the ones who are around you, who you love and who depend and who would love you, then you do whatever it takes.

00:30:09:01 - 00:30:25:22
Speaker 1
I look at myself as being someone that I've got my arms, my legs and my taste, my eyesight. overall, I'm a whole person. I'm a whole person. Mentally, I'm a whole person physically. So whatever comes next is just something that I'll have to deal with and we'll just have to embrace,

00:30:25:22 - 00:30:27:07
Speaker 1
as best I can.

00:30:27:07 - 00:30:27:26
Speaker 1
So,

00:30:27:26 - 00:30:29:11
Speaker 1
anyway, this is

00:30:29:11 - 00:30:36:18
Speaker 1
the quick rundown of episode one of my new podcast, Mark's Prostate Cancer Experience.

00:30:36:18 - 00:30:42:19
Speaker 1
So this is something I'm really looking forward to continuing to develop and evolve. And,

00:30:42:19 - 00:30:42:27
Speaker 1
this

00:30:42:27 - 00:30:49:20
Speaker 1
will post in most of the regular podcast channels because obviously you're listening or watching it right now,

00:30:49:22 - 00:30:57:27
Speaker 1
But this will be a video podcast that I do put into YouTube on my regular channel, but we'll also syndicate to the audio channels as well.

00:30:57:29 - 00:31:15:02
Speaker 1
So that's it for now. And if you have comments or want to make suggestions or want to talk about things that are important to you, I'm always happy to read as many as I can and try to respond as best I can. And I guess

00:31:15:02 - 00:31:22:07
Speaker 1
the closing words I'll have for any of you listening to this, who is newly diagnosed with prostate cancer?

00:31:22:07 - 00:31:24:29
Speaker 1
the wisest thing I can say to you is,

00:31:24:29 - 00:31:45:11
Speaker 1
this is not what's going to kill you. This is just a disease that has to be treated. This is one of the only cancers we have in our bodies that is completely curable very easily. And even when there's a recurrence, when you look at people with very severe cancer, lung cancer and stomach cancer and all sorts of things,

00:31:45:11 - 00:31:46:25
Speaker 1
the ability to cure those

00:31:46:25 - 00:31:48:21
Speaker 1
is quite difficult.

00:31:48:24 - 00:32:09:08
Speaker 1
prostate cancer, if treated early enough and treated properly, it goes away completely. And if it doesn't go away completely the first time, we give it a second time, etc., etc. but it is very curable and that's what makes it great. So that's it for now. I wish all of you well, and I look forward to sharing more of this journey with each and every one of you.

00:32:09:08 - 00:32:09:27
Speaker 1
Thank you.