Fred Green: "Today is June 30, 2016 and it marks the tenth anniversary of my surgery. I am now 10 years cancer free, at least I hope so. Even though I saw my doctor and urologist last year – nine year free, my last PSA number was 0.0002, which is a non-existence number (for a PSA).
It’s kind of scary, considering that I have to continually check and monitor my PSA numbers to make sure they got it all out. I guess the concern I had was to the fact that I saw my Doctor in May of last year.
My guess is that since I had my prostate removed that he no longer had to check my “prostate” anymore. One of the things I have learned over the past ten years, WE, people, especially men, have to educate ourselves.
And by educating ourselves to ask the questions that “we” have to ask our doctors. Because doctors are not going to ask you anything besides, where does it hurt? I had noticed over the years that my PSA number was under that “magic” number, 4.00. This usually means that if you are over that number you may have a problem with your prostate.
Well, my number was 3.4 and my doctor never took notice to it because it was not at the 4.0 level yet. So, I really never knew I had a problem until I went to the urologist for an unrelated problem and he looked at my PSA number and said I had a problem that he wanted to look into further.
The reason it bothered him was because, in 1995 I had a baseline number of 0.95. And in 2005 I had a PSA number of 3.4. To laymen and my doctor, the number meant I was okay. To the Urologist, the number meant something was wrong. That was because the number had risen to fast in those 10 years.
In November of 2005 I had a biopsy and they notified me December 26 that I had cancer. The fast growing kind which is more prevalent in African-Americans. In six months, I had gone from 12% involved to, after my prostate was removed, it was dissected, and it was reveled to me that my prostate was over 40% involved. That’s what my urologist told me.
Now, I have learned to ask those questions, even though I won’t see my doctor until July 30th. But, I will see the urologist on July 7th. I will then get a PSA test then and will know for sure when I see my doctor again.
Ten years, cancer free. Today, to celebrate, I went out and ran 3 miles (actually, I do that just about every day anyway). I have done about 151 miles since the beginning of this year, and I still feel good. And they say old age isn’t fun!"
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