Israeli Prime Minister

This may be a little off-topic but I just read a news report about the Israeli prime minister being dianosed with prostate cancer, the article states he is scheduled to have "minor" surgery. What's up with that?

41diagnosed said...
I read the same news and thought about the amazing benefit to someone in politics of the pathetic lack of awareness of Prostate Cancer. That the general public would believe that article is clearly a sign of the fact that the general public knows almost nothing about the disease.

And how do I know...because when my doctor told me my PSA was elevated this past June, I asked, "what's my PSA?"

I have heard from numerous oncologists that PCa research is 30 years behind Breast Cancer Research. I've never heard of a walk for prostate cancer. And other than this site, guys don't really discuss incontinence and lack of hard ons or what percentage erection they are getting . It's just not PC (hmmm, there's a pun for ya!).

Honestly, if it weren't for this site, I don't think I would have anyone to tell about what I've been through or am experiencing other than my wife.

So sad as it is, the general public will believe the Prime Minister has had a little "bout" with cancer and that he will be fine after he has his "little" surgery. For the rest of us, we know he is going through the same thing we all have gone through, only he can't reach out to us because of his political position. So he will have to deal with this privately and without the support that all of us have had from one another. Sad for sure.

Well, I wish him the best and hope for him that he truly will be fine! I wish the same for everyone here and anyone diagnosed with PCa or any other cancer.

Here is a link to a local walk for PCa that is local to me (Seattle area) and is happening this weekend.

http://www.pacerace.org/ so they do exist. I would say Breast Cancer gets most of the attention though. Pink this and pink that. Not that it doesn't deserve it, just that PCa needs to step up to that level.

I think one of the reasons the Loma Linda experience works so well for those that choose it, is that everyone who is there has the same thing in common, PCa. Trust me when I say that on the treatment level in the evening when I was there it was the daily norm to stay in the reception area for as long as 1-2 hours after I was done with my daily dose of Protons talking with all the guys and their wives about all of the topics that get discussed here. Nothing was off-limits and I laughed more in those 2 months than I had in the several months preceeding treatment.

I meant it in the simplest sense, that's all. We don't prevent prostate cancer. If we did, this chat would not exist.

hi all, blue is the color for prostate cancer. here is a link to a website that sells a variety of items. http://www.ustoo.org/Shopping/Main.aspx

After going through what I have to date,, I certainly have a lot more respect for those that do come out and deal with their disease in public, and issues like ED, including Bob Dole.

Interestingly, there is a story in today's Los Angeles Times praising Prime Minister Olmert's frankness:


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-olmert1nov01,1,2391904.story
From the Los Angeles Times
DISPATCH FROM JERUSALEM
Israel's Olmert breaks new ground
The prime minister's forthright disclosure that he has cancer is seen as a watershed in the nation's political culture.
By Richard Boudreaux
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 1, 2007

JERUSALEM — The text message from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office conveyed a sense of urgency: The Israeli leader was calling a news conference in less than three hours. Reporters were told the topic -- his health -- but were instructed not to mention it in advance.

Tired of being misled about the medical condition of the country's leaders, the Israeli journalists rebelled. Within minutes, the airwaves and newspaper websites were churning with speculation about a mysterious illness and a looming change at the government helm.

The ailment turned out to be early-stage prostate cancer, and Olmert's calm and forthright disclosure of his treatable condition this week has been widely welcomed as a watershed in the political culture. His fiercest critics acknowledge the value of his precedent: He is the first Israeli leader to fully disclose the details of an illness threatening his life.

But did he really have a choice?

Perhaps not. Israel's hyper-competitive, free-wheeling press feels burned for swallowing official disinformation that depicted Olmert's predecessor, Ariel Sharon, as bouncing back satisfactorily from a stroke in December 2005. Sharon's second stroke, the following month, put him in a coma from which he has not recovered.

Sharon was simply following a tradition of secrecy that Israel has shared with many other countries.

The late Golda Meir, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin, among other Israeli leaders, concealed ill health to protect their effectiveness in office.

But they ruled in a different era. The speed of the Internet has eroded the cult of secrecy. So has the growth of public interest in the health of leaders, a trend accompanied by increasingly open discussion of cancer and the ways to detect and treat it.

These changes would have made concealment risky for Olmert, Herb Keinon explained in the Jerusalem Post.

"Journalists, because of what happened to Sharon, would have doggedly pursued any scrap of information about Olmert's health -- information that inevitably would have leaked out -- and would have thought, broadcast and written the absolute worst," Keinon wrote. "Had he not given a full revelation, then rumors would have spread, and a tiny growth on his prostate would have morphed into something much larger and more serious in the media."

That, in turn, might have undermined Olmert's fragile coalition government and his ability to negotiate with Palestinian and Arab leaders at a U.S.-brokered Middle East peace summit expected by year's end.

One of Olmert's advisors offered an explanation for his decision to open up -- the influence of America's candid treatment of politicians' ailments and particularly the example of Rudolph W. Giuliani. While mayor of New York, he dropped out of the U.S. Senate race in 2000 to be treated for prostate cancer.

"Olmert saw how his predecessors wriggled when they were asked to tell about their state of health," the unnamed advisor told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. "He decided instead to act like his friend Rudy Giuliani, who told the American public when he became ill."

To dispel skeptics, Olmert brought two of his doctors to Monday's news conference and allowed them to answer reporters' questions in minute detail.

"The general tone of the questions was: This time you're not going to trick us," said Sima Kadmon, who covered the conference for Yediot Aharonot.

Many Israelis were reassured by the answers. Opinion surveys showed that large majorities believed the doctors' statements that Olmert's tumor had been detected early, that his chances of being cured by surgery were high and that he could continue to perform his duties before and after hospitalization. Olmert's approval rating shot up 6 points, to 41%.

Thelma Jacobson, a Jerusalem Post reader in the town of Petah Tikva, was less impressed.

"There's no way, in this age of instant communications, that Olmert could have kept his illness a secret. So he spoke up. Big deal," she wrote to the newspaper's letters column.

"I wish him good health so we can defeat him in the polls," she added.