Living with Prostate Cancer

My husband is 54 years old and had not been to a doctor for probably 20 years until he fell last April and hurt his knee. The knee required surgery and the orthopedic surgeon required a pre-surgical physical. Since Gabe did not have a regular physician, I him to my GP who did a complete physical, including a rectal exam. Gabe had absolutely no outward symptoms that something may be wrong. The doctor immediately felt something in his prostate and took the necessary blood work for a psa test. Gabe’s psa results came back at 29.9. After being referred to a urologist we learned that his gleason score is 7-8, which is extremely high and shows a very advanced case of prostate cancer

Our urologist has advised against surgery to remove the prostate because of it’s advanced stage, and has also ruled out using the radioactive seeds as the cancer has already spread outside of the prostate. Gabe has been on chemotherapy since June and started external beam radiation on September 9th. Plans are for chemo to continue for a year and for radiation to continue every day for the next eight weeks. We are living each day one at a time now, trying to laugh as often as possible and relishing every minute we have together. My warning to other men who don’t feel it is necessary to go to the doctor unless something is wrong, is to start yearly physicals by age 50 or you may end up with stage 4 cancer before you know it.