Patients share how routine screening, rising PSA levels, and persistent health concerns ultimately led to their prostate cancer diagnoses. Their stories underscore the importance of regular PSA testing, trusting your instincts when something feels wrong, seeking expert evaluation, and acting quickly when faced with high-risk or advanced disease.
Bennie Johnson, Jr.:
2005, Dr. Green diagnosed me with the prostate cancer, and he asked me at that particular time whether or not I wanted to be treated or we wanted to let it go to see how fast it grows or whatever, but I told him, "No, I'll take the five years and we'll see what happened." I told my wife, and it really didn't bother me at that particular point, because I'm a praying guy and I prayed that this thing would just go away. And I told her about it. So I said, "In a few years from now, we'll check it again and see whether or not we have to do anything."
And 2010, I went to the cancer center. Well, right then, the radiation, radiologist, and they told me that I had the cancer and I was going to have to be treated. And I went home and talked with my wife about it, and she was a little upset about it. But when I walked into the radiation center and they told me about it on my way out, I said, "Well, let's get started." And at 2010 is when I needed to get the radiation and I met Dr. Lewis. And from that point, I got the biopsies done, and from that point on, it was Dr. Lewis. And after he retired, then I met Dr. King.
Porter Freeman:
Two years ago, I went for my yearly physical, which I would urge everybody to have regardless, and my primary care physician said those dreaded words that no guy wants to hear. He said, "Uh-oh." And I said, "Uh-oh, what?" And he said, "This doesn't feel right. We're going to schedule you for a biopsy." And I was sent to the Augusta University hospital, part of the Medical College of Georgia, and I had a biopsy done, which is somewhat unpleasant but necessary. And I got a phone call from the hospital to come back to discuss what was found, and I did. I came back and I met Dr. Clawson, who has just been wonderful. He's been with me every step of the way and I trust him emphatically.
And he gave me the bad news that it was cancer. And I said, "Well, are you busy the rest of the day? Let's get this taken care of. I wanted it over with." And he said, "We would make an appointment, and we would go through some informations." It did concern me. We had originally scheduled the surgery. The prostate had to come out. We originally scheduled it for I think eight weeks later, but I got a call in a few days that said pathology expedited this, that on a Gleason scale, it was at 9 I think out of a possible 10. And being in law enforcement, the Gleason scale, a 1 would be like jaywalking and 10 is a double homicide. That's how I explained it at work. We had to get this done quickly.
Bob Hollander:
I was diagnosed with prostate cancer at the age of 52. Well, that's when I should have been diagnosed. That's when the pathway started. So I've probably been living with this now for 15 years.
A couple years after I turned 50 and I realized it was time to do those mature adult things that men need to do once they become of a certain age, I hadn't really seen a doctor before for pretty much of anything, and I made an appointment to see my primary, got scheduled for a colonoscopy, had my first PSA checked, and it came back a little high. And not having any reference point, my primary decided to repeat it a month or two later, and it came back a little higher.
So it was just outside of the normal range in the lower end, but with the two tests showing what appeared to be a trend in the wrong direction, he referred me to a urologist for biopsy. And I had the panel of biopsies, standard transrectal approach, 14 biopsies. And I was told that ... Let's see, what was I told? I was told it was negative, negative for cancer. Not totally normal, but negative for cancer. My PSA then was about four and a half.
And I did my next follow-up PSA two years later. So let's see, the initial one was 2007. Now, it's 2009. And the follow-up PSA was 95. And I have to be honest, I was scared because I mean, what else could it be? PSA going from basically five to 95 in two years. And when I went back to the urologist, I expressed that concern. I was like, "Man, just take it out. I mean, what else could it be if the biopsy again comes back negative?" And at that time, I was assuming that there was cancer there the first time, it was just missed, even though he did it 14 times. But he assured me that in his skilled hands, the biopsy would be definitive. So I had another standard panel of biopsies, transrectal approach, and the results were the same. No cancer, not negative, but there was no cancer. And the urologist assured me that my PSA would always be elevated and to never check it again.
I went out to my backyard to do part of my usual daily workout. I'd put a climbing rope in my backyard from the tree sort of thing that you had in phys ed class or they've had in phys ed class, and I would do a straight-leg rope climb, sit on the ground, legs in the V, and ... And this one morning, I went out, and as I started to pull up, I felt this strange internal tug inside my pelvis. It wasn't a pain, but it was a sensation that I'd never had before, and it's like, "What the heck is that?" Because it didn't correspond to any anatomic structures that I knew of. I knew it wasn't in a muscle. And I continued to monitor it for the next week, and it was there every time. Every time I went to do my rope climb, there was this weird feeling that just didn't belong there.
So I called my primary, wanted to see him and I said, "There's something wrong here." And the truth is what I was feeling was so trivial. It only bothered me when I worked out. It was the sort of thing where the doctor could have said, "Well, if it bothers you when you do that, well, then don't do that." But my primary was actually a friend colleague of mine and he knew me well through the university, and I guess he trusted my own judgment enough to believe that there was probably something going on.
And he sent me for a CT, abdominal pelvic CT, and that's when it showed that I had large bulky metastatic disease filling my pelvis with some nodal spread up into some higher para-aortic nodes, or as I refer to it as the node that got away. And my PSA then was 250. So at that point, it was pretty clear that I had metastatic disease.
When I was diagnosed, the questions that I had was probably just the basic existential stuff. It's like, what now? What next? Well, what's going to happen? And I was 55, 57. I mean, this all happening way earlier in my life than I was ready for. I had been kind of ... I don't want to say health freak, but yeah, probably a health fitness freak ever since high school. I worked out every day. I watched my diet. Before the diagnosis, I was still within a couple pounds of my high school wrestling weight. So I was deliberately doing everything I could to maximize my longevity. And here I was now with diagnosis of metastatic prostate cancer in my mid-50s. It was like, my god, this wasn't part of my agenda.