HI, this is Ken. I have been very hesitant to say
anything but my family feels like I should let people know. There isn’t a good
was to say this so I guess I’ll be blunt. I have cancer; Prostate cancer to be
exact. I guess if you’re a man and you’ve got to choose a cancer, this is the
cancer of choice.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard (or said),
“Oh, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Something else will kill you before
prostate cancer ever will.” If I was 76 – 80 years old that could be true. But
even then, my doctor told me those men would have died from cancer. They just
had other problems that got them first. He said that if you don’t take care of any type of cancer it will kill you, (unless you die
from an unrelated problem). I never thought I’d hear this, but, for this type
of cancer I’m too young. I should be 15 – 20 years older before it starts.
For me, it started right around my birthday in October.
My lower back started hurting again. At times it felt like someone had hit me
across the small of my back with a baseball bat. That went on for a couple of
days, and then I noticed I was passing lots of blood in my urine. I finally
went to the doctor (PA) who, by my description of what hurt and what was
happening, thought I was probably passing a kidney stone. That eased my mind
for a couple of days, but nothing happened except I kept passing more and more
blood. Finally I went back to the doctor. He sent me for an CT scan to try and
pinpoint where all the action was. I went back again the next day only to find
out the test hadn’t shown any kidney stones. In addition, it wasn’t able to
pinpoint what was causing all of the bleeding. I went back to the doctor and he
did an in-depth exam in his office going in from the front. (Without sedation)
The tube had a camera so the doctor could see what was going on. He told me (I
was awake and paying close attention to everything he did and said) he expected
to see where a stone or two was blocked, but all he could see was blood. He had
to keep draining it every few seconds so he could see anything. (There was a TV
by my table so I could turn my head and watch what he was doing. That was an
interesting TV show. L)
After checking everywhere he finally decided there weren’t
any kidney stones. Nothing else looked bad or suspicious, but by now I was
passing so much blood I was running down a little. We were all baffled, but as
we were driving home Lu and I started talking about our medications and any
changes we had made recently. We had changed to a prescription-by-mail service
and I had just gotten a new bunch of pills. I was still taking the same
medication, but when I got to checking closer I discovered my warfarin pill was
for 10 mgs and not 5 like it had been before. (They both looked exactly the same, so I figured I must have been taking
twice as much as I should have been taking.) We went back to the doctor and had
an INR blood test done. It checks the thickness of your blood. Normally your
blood should be around a 1. While I was on the warfarin they tried to keep it
between 2 and 3. (This was to prevent blood clots.) When they checked it this
time it was 14.8! Needless to say, the doctor was concerned. He called my
regular Doctor, Dr. King Udall (who has been my doctor for almost 30 years, and
who I really like.) I didn’t appreciate the seriousness of it until he called
me at home and spoke very gently but firmly to me. He said, “Ken, I want you to
stop whatever you’re doing and go right to the emergency room. Don’t bump or
run into anything, and don’t wait. Do it right now!”
I walked into the kitchen and told Luann (who was having
a man fix her kitchen lights.) She became quite concerned and we left
immediately for the hospital. (We are lucky enough to trust our electrician and
left him to fix the lights.)
We’ve been to lots of emergency rooms in the past few
years between Luann’s problems and her dads. Unless you go in an ambulance it
seems like you have to wait forever. This time it was different. As soon as we told
them I was there because my INR was 14.8 they immediately took us back to a
room and had me sit on the bed and not touch or bump anything. Then a nurse
came in and gave me a big shot of vitamin K, and we waited around for a couple
of hours. By that time the vitamin K had done its job and my blood was thick
enough to clot if I broke a vessel or something.
That was the start of it all. During my exam in his
office my urologist checked my prostate and discovered it was enlarged. (They
call it BPH) It didn’t have any strange bumps or look discolored or anything,
just big. Anyway, that led to a roto-rooter job in November. I went in for
outpatient surgery on the 14th, but there were a few problems and I
ended up staying overnight and coming home the 15th with a follow-up
scheduled for 3 weeks. On the following Tuesday (one week later) my urologist
called me at home and told me they had biopsied the tissue they removed from my
prostate and it had come back showing cancer.
Looking back on it now I realize I was in a daze. It
didn’t seem real. We set up another appointment for a little sooner, and I just
went about what I normally do in the evening. It didn’t’ sink in until I had
some time to sit quietly and think about it.
So, here we are. Luann has leiomyosarcoma and I have prostate
cancer. What a pair we are. Luann teases me and says I was getting jealous of all
the attention she was getting. Believe me, I would much rather everyone focus
on Luann.
For right now we wait until the first part of March and
do another biopsy. We have a baseline from all the tests and results we did in
November. The new ones taken in March will give us a clearer picture of what
we’re facing.
My emotions are all over the place. Some days are diamonds,
some days are stones. Sometimes the hard days won’t leave me alone. Sometimes a
cold wind puts a chill in my bones. Some days are diamonds, some days are
stones. (Thanks John Denver)
If I stay busy I do much better than when I have some
time to think. I guess I’ll stay busy.
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