Returning to the Scene of the Crime

I had blood drawn a few days ago for a variety of tests as part of my routine physical. Last year my physical was hardly routine: it turned out to be the beginning of this life--changing nightmare (you can call it what you want, but let's face it, that's what it is).

Anyway, I'm a bit less nervous going into this physical. The PSA has always stood out as the one test to worry about, and last year my number finally came up (pun intended). So, what could possibly go wrong this time? My cholesterol tends to be a little high. I guess it could be higher? I guess one of those other multitude of tests could be suddenly high necessitating other tests and starting a new nightmare.

Gee...whatever happened to those fun physicals when we were younger (breathe in--breathe out-- everything normal-- nice seeing you -- see you next year --- goodbye!!).

Oh..well...

Incidentally, the aforementioned tests did not include my PSA. That happens in 10-11 days. My routine physical is Wednesday!

Mel

Interesting you should bring this up....we tend to think that because one bad thing has or hasn't happened as the case may be, nothing else will go wrong.

A friend had his second biopsy for PCa (24 needle) just a couple of days after my husband's 10 needle biopsy in July. This friend's PSA was higher than my husband's, his prostate was much larger and all the signs were that he had PCa and my husband didn't....

However, it was the exact opposite. My husband has prostate cancer, our friend apparently does not or it is presently undetectable. However, our friend's kidney function numbers were a little "off" and he was sent for more tests. Turns out he has a mass on his kidney, likely renal cancer and he is having a kidney removed on 9/28/10. In truth, his negative prostate biopsy permitted his likely kidney cancer to be discovered incidentally. His tumor is the size of a golf ball, he has no symptoms and the docs told him that often kidney tumors reach the size of a melon before discovery.

So follow-up on the suspicion of prostate cancer has probably saved our friend's life. So, yeah, the fun physicals are a thing of the past and it is OK to mourn them but we can be grateful that staying on top of things now hopefully allows for a long(er) future.