Retire?

I hope that your ID means that you are retired in Naples. I love it there and that is where I am going in retirement.
Also, I believe that there is data to suggest that PSA moves slower in the summer -?Vitamin D. Retirement could be helping your situation as well.

Enjoy!

I was retired about two months before my diagnosis and I must say that I was devastated, but now I’m okay with it. My wife recently lost a jobbut received a small severence so we have been enjoying spending time and travelling. Right this moment we are looking to relocate so that we can buy a property that lowers our housing expense so we have more cash available go travel. Life is good, I am relaxed, and enjoy not being rushed about anything. So I lift my glass to you and say congratulations, its time to have a more wonderful life.

I have not retired. But my diagnosis really opened my eyes, and soon after treatment, I started to pull back. I realized how utterly unimportant it was to be working my butt off and how very important it was to find a balance that allows me to both make a living but enjoy my life.
For the last 18 months or so, I've been working 4 days a week. When I'm home I usually get to the office around 10 and leave by 4-4:30.
I spend winter in Florida where I work from home, and am sort of semi retired while I'm down here. So I work a few hours in the morning, and then shut it down. My clients know they can reach me on my cell anytime and they don't care.

It has made life much more enjoyable. I would retire outright now, but the business I'm in makes it hard to just walk away, so I am introducing my partner to clients one by one, and probably a year from December, I'll wa;k away.

Naples. Good on you for pulling the plug. We all only get to go around once, and sometimes it takes something like cancer to point out the importance of making jute most of it.

Enjoy your retirement. I've been retired since 2011 and am as busy as ever - thanks in part to a 100+ year old house that is a permanent maintenance and renovation project. I also sit on a town subcommittee, am a director and treasurer of a small non-profit conservation trust, and I spend a lot of time in the summer as a volunteer overseeing and maintaining town-owned conservation land - 60 acres of fields and forest plus a 30 acre pond - mowing grassland trails, fighting back invasive brush, pulling invasive water chestnuts from the pond (a convenient excuse for an early evening in the canoe with my wife), etc. I always have a camera with me and have frequent wildlife encounters--deer of course, but also coyotes, foxes (usually going the other way after seeing see me first) -- our annually returning pair of swans on the pond, etc. Also occasional less pleasant confrontations with violators on ATVs or dirt bikes.

I didn't retire because of my prostate cancer. I was only 55 at diagnosis and couldn't afford to. But nearly all of my stress in the 10 years between diagnosis and retirement came from the job itself - herding cats and writing bids and proposals for multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts all under insane deadline pressure. I never had PTSD from Vietnam or from prostate cancer, but that job nearly gave it to me.
Jim

With some planning and luck I had the opportunity to take an early retirement for a modest life in my early 50s. I was diagnosed with serious Stage IV prostate cancer at age 65. In hindsight, one of the best decisions I ever made. Enjoy your transition into retirement.
Charles

As a now ten-year veteran of being retired, a few points I would like to make.

First, Pratoman said:

"I realized how utterly unimportant it was to be working my butt off and how very important it was to find a balance that allows me to both make a living but enjoy my life."

And TJ123 said:

" … some people are very fortunate to work in jobs they love that give them a supercharge and help them forget about other problems in their lives."

Both are right. We've all heard the expression "Nobody dies wishing he'd spent more time at the office" and for most of us that's true. But TJ123 is certainly right also in pointing out that it's a lot of fun to work at something you love, for as long as you can.

Both of these points remind me of something I once observed years ago while still working in the Catalog Department of my library. A colleague of mine there, Nancy, was the ultimate workaholic. That job was her life. She never married or had a family, and she usually even worked extra days and at nights, though not required, simply because she wanted to.

In fact I have this memory of her leaving the department late one Friday afternoon, going out the door with this big, fat (inches thick) 3-ring notebook under her arm. I immediately recognized it as "Tagging and Coding Specifications for Input of Monographic Cataloging Data," one of the reference tools we used at the time to input data into our system. "Heavens!" I thought to myself, "She's going to spend her weekend, maybe all of it, reading that dry, boring tech manual!"

Know what I did what weekend? I spent it throwing a football around in the back yard with my young sons, and later grilled some burgers for a family cookout.

And I have ZERO regrets that I made that choice, again and again, while I was working. Family was always Priority One with me, and I have two fine sons, with great lives going for themselves, to show for always putting them first, over the job.

The promotions I might have gotten had I put the job first in my life? The extra salary increases? Looking back now all that would have seemed meaningless, if my relationship with my wife and kids would have suffered, because I was always "at work."

I always did well at my job, always getting high marks at evaluation time, but I never made it my whole life.

That's not to put my former colleague down. If she was happy with being devoted to her job and little else, then more power to her. I just hope that in the end she never looked back and thought about the other things in life she had made no time for, because of her job.

And if you're like her, then maybe staying on at your job for as long as you can will be the right thing for you to do.

But for the rest of us, the question remains, when is the right time. Well, in my own case, looking back again from a ten-year perspective, I now realize just how important "gut feeling" was for me. When I had come to "feel it in my bones" that it was time to go, I went with that feeling, and I know now that for me it was definitely the right call.

I would do the same thing over again.

So if every other important factor, especially one's financial situation, has been vetted, and things are still "go" for retirement, if that decision is to be made, I think putting a lot of trust in one's "gut feeling" about it is very important.

That's what I did, and ten years later I don’t regret at all having done it that way.

BTW, we had a pretty good discussion on this issue, of when to retire, a few years ago, if anyone wants to pursue this even further:

/www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=35&m=3398048

Retired but still working part time at what I loved to do until diagnosed, then focussed on primary treatment and now looking at secondary treatment options.
The common thread here seems to be to enoy life while we have it — in whatever combination of work, play, travel, volunteering is best for each of us. After reading your comments I’m reconsidering making a spring trip to Switzerland to see my son, wife, and grandsons. Thanks for posting!

Excellent thoughts and advise from all. My wife and I have been 'retired' from our primary wage earning jobs for several years. With all we have going, we're busier than ever, even as this cancer thing is trying to muck things up. We won't permit that.

I miss flying, but not as much as I though I would, 9/11 changed everything. Silvia misses the folks she worked with for three decades. We both count ourselves as most fortunate. Stay active, busy and engaged...brothers.

I retired 12 years ago after working p/t stating at 13 caddying and as a stock boy at a five and dime thruout H s....then joined the navy at 17...got into atc (air traffic control} 78 bucks a month cash... stood in line for it ...watched the payday stakes poker game in the barracks as some got rich and others not so much...for some reason... barracked with the jar heads...I was a squid...it was cool...we were all gonna tell the officers what to do once in the field...atc types are natural dictatos...we were good at it and knew it..no LTjg or even full capt was gonna question us in the soup.it was gold..got out...went west with Dylan and da boiz little college time san jose state duren power salute at mexico Olympics...member dat... hired with FAA...some how garnered a secret clearance with the Fed... worked airplanes till retiring...in 2005...er ah... oh yea...retiring...instruct the jury do disregard all prior to retiring...once retred I worked at as a copter dispatcher with a tour co in Hawaii...then a gym...so as to get all my ss quarters...then worked at OU in OKC as contract instructor for FAA...Mike Monrony Aero Nautical center...just weaning of the teat...as it were. Now liven the good life in the san Fernando...ops wrong script...sorry anyway heres the real skinny on retitrement...Once you are retired ...you know intellectually that you used to work...but dagnabit it if it ain't true...you can only live in the present{ceptin by an act of will}.. to live right there in the present...heck it was a present...never to kick a gift horse in da mout{heck I knew all bout da Nietche fella...but I ain ,t stupid} and like that ther fella wit my name from that big boat dat hit da ice cube...here I am sittin with you fine ladies and gentle men....I aint editen this gainst me nature...context should deliver

I retired a few times and have been fully retired for 5 years and love it. I am very busy and active. The ability to focus on family, friends and fun is the gift of 40 years of working. peace, Denis

I retired 3 1/2 years ago from a large corporation. I had enough of your not making enough money in service bull crap. We had been taken over by another company about 6 yrs prior. I had worked alot of weekends, late night callouts and pretty much was available for most overtime calls. about a week after i left I was sleeping like a baby. No more stress!

I took 3 months off from working and then went and found a part time job. It was great walking the dog for about 90 minutes in the morning listening to the birds sing etc.. Going out having breakfeast or wings having my morning coffees on the back porch weather permitting.

When I was diagnosed I stopped working altogether. The lupron has sure kicked the crap out of me. I cannot believe the loss of strength now, but i guess that what we get from .1 for a testosterone level. I goto a gym twice a week with other cancer survivors. The workouts are done with 2 trainers. We are now getting ready to downsize our house and move into a condo. We will be doing some traveling this summer.

Take care my brothers!

Best post that I've ever made. Great reading. Thanks