Patients reflect on the emotional impact of a prostate cancer diagnosis, sharing how fear, uncertainty, and difficult treatment decisions shaped the beginning of their journeys. Their stories emphasize the importance of advocating for yourself, leaning on loved ones and faith for support, and taking an active role in understanding your diagnosis and choosing the path forward.
Kelvin Slaton:
Well, someplace around the age of 52, maybe 51, I started going each year for what I call the mini physical. We would go to the doctor, he would do the blood test, and check the prostate and all.
Around that same time, I was having problems with getting up four or five times, maybe six times a night. I was really affecting my sleep. He kept telling ... This was my primary physician. He kept telling me that there was no problem that he could feel, but that was not his field. So it went on for a good while and it seemed like it slacked off at times, but then it would pick back up, that I was probably five, six times a night again, getting up to go urinate. He finally told me, he says, "I can no longer help you with this. You need to go see a urologist."
So my wife had already seen a urologist, Dr. Bill. And so, we went to him. He checked me and then he decided he wanted to do another PSA that would be free and clear, I believe it was. When we did that, the PSA numbers were up high. Well, to me, they were high. They weren't extremely high by any measure. They were probably between two or three, maybe even a four.
But at that time, he did that. Then when we came back, he wanted to do a biopsy. And we did a biopsy. At that time, after the biopsy, he called. He called me at work and told me he needed to see me, that the biopsy came up positive.
Michael Morris:
I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in February of 2019. I was 64 at that time. One day I got heartburn and it was bad. I took the Tums and they didn't work. And so, I went to my general care doctor, my primary physician. I said, "Hey, I got this heartburn. Can you take care of it? Oh, by the way, I got my new insurance card, but you're not listed as my primary. Can you change that?" "Yes. Oh, by the way, you get a free wellness test."
And so, I got this free wellness test and it showed that I had a PSA of 47. Now PSA over five is bad. 11, I think, is the line of demarcation. I'm not an expert, but I think that's what it is. And mine was 47. So he said, "We need to set you up with a urologist immediately."
And so, we went to see the urologist, he did a biopsy, and he said, "You have stage four and five cancer. It's already metastasized." Of course the initial question I asked was, "How long do I have to live?" and he said, "Five years."
Mike Hoppel:
The diagnosis was very hard on me and probably more hard on my family by far, and my wife and my daughter and my grandkids. They gave me all these options and told me, "This is what we can do and this is what you have and this is where you are. If you do nothing, you maybe have four or five years. If you do something, you maybe have 10 years.
If you beat it, you're good." And so, by the time they got done, and about four or five different specialists talked to me ... I'm not a doctor. I don't know ... I couldn't even understand the words. Everything was flying through my head. And so, we went home and we talked about it, talked with Katie, and we decided to be very aggressive about what we were doing.
Rickey Lee:
What happened to me was that I noticed that I was urinating very slow. I kept doing that because men are very hardheaded about going to the doctor. I had a doctor, but my doctor wouldn't listen to me when I kept telling that doctor about my prostate. So it went on for a little while.
So she gave me some pills, some kind of Flomax or something like that, and I took those pills. And so, by me urinating again, I let it went for like two years. And so, when I met my wife, I met her and I told her about what was going on with me, and she looked into it a little deeper. And so, she told me to change physicians.
And so, once I changed physicians, I learned about the count, some kind of count or whatever. I still don't really know what it is. I just wanted to be well. You know what I'm saying? And so, once I got diagnosed with it, I was scared because I had never had a surgery before in my life. I didn't know what cancer was. I've heard of it, but I didn't think it'd come to me.
It scared me to death, but I had God on my side. That's one thing. I had religion. And so, that helped me get through it. When I first got the diagnosis, it was like I was numb. I didn't know how to feel. I didn't know which way to go. I was trying to take the journey by myself, and that was the wrong way.
Tom Hulsey:
I was diagnosed with prostate cancer on my birthday in 2015. I was 61 years old, and it was a complete shock to me. I lost my grandfather to prostate cancer, so obviously it was in the family. So that really prompted me to keep my annual checkups and all.
I was filled with so many emotions when I heard those words because I never expected it. I was angry. I was embarrassed. I was scared. Most of all, though, I felt like a fraud because I had always been viewed as very fit and healthy and lived a healthy lifestyle, and that's the way people looked at me. And so, it was very embarrassing.
At the same time, I did not share my story at the time. A lot of lessons learned in my journey, but one thing I did not do, it took me over a year before I told anybody about my diagnosis, and it nearly did me in.
Brian McCloskey:
So I'm a 57-year-old marketing executive. I'm a husband, a father of three. I enjoy surfing and I am also a patient advocate. I saw my general practitioner. He saw that my prostate was enlarged. I went to a urologist. We went through a number of different office visits, and then I decided that I was going to have a biopsy.
The results of the biopsy came in when I was at work. I'll never forget it. It was about 3:00 on a beautiful Sunday or a beautiful weekday in San Diego. I just wrapped up a meeting and I had about 10 minutes before my next meeting. I listened to my voicemail, called the doctor, and he told me that I had prostate cancer.
So that is a life-altering diagnosis, but I didn't really have time to process it at the time. I had to go into another meeting.
What do I do now in terms of processing that information from the doctor? You really don't know where to go or what to do because no one really walks around in life thinking that they're going to get cancer. For me, I've prided myself on being very active and living a healthy lifestyle. And so, this was just a complete shock for me.
And so, because I sort of classified it as, okay, this is a problem, okay, it's maybe like a whole lot of other problems, it's more complex, it's a completely different field, but I recognized that I needed to do everything I could to solve for that problem. But it was a real shock, I'm not going to lie. You just don't expect to get that diagnosis.