Unexpected advice from my financial advisor: get tested!

St. Boniface

“Cancer was detected in your biopsy.”

I froze. Not news I ever wanted to hear, but there it was.

The urologist’s lips kept moving, but I heard nothing else. I felt like I’d just fallen out of a speeding car.

My wife, in the room with me, listened intently.

“The results show some cores with cancer… some are more aggressive… this can be cured with treatment….”

My path to this cataclysmic pronouncement was unusual.

A few months earlier, my financial advisor startled me by sharing his ongoing prostate cancer story and complicated recovery.

“Detection starts with a simple PSA test,” he said. “You need to do this.”

A prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test screens for prostate cancer by measuring a protein produced by the prostate gland.

I left our meeting and called my family doctor to request a PSA test. I had no symptoms, so what did I have to worry about?

Two weeks later, the test revealed elevated data that signaled possible presence of cancer. I was alarmed, but the Canadian Cancer Society says that false positives are common — only 1 in 4 abnormal or elevated PSA results actually point to cancer. Surely, I wasn’t one of those four?

I took a second PSA test to corroborate the first. Another week passed. The results were the same.

A biopsy would be more definitive, I was told. And it was. After a two-month process, my urologist delivered the blunt truth-bomb: I had cancer.

CancerCare professionals sprang into action, filling my life with blood work, appointments, imaging, and a CT body scan to assess whether the cancer had metastasized beyond the prostate. Thankfully it hadn’t.

Next, a huge decision: have surgery to remove the prostate or begin radiation treatment to bombard the infected area. I chose the surgery, uneasy about either call.

My surgeon sped me up the queue due to my elevated Gleason scores, a key indicator from biopsy results. A little unnerving.

The interminable waiting for results from tests with life-altering outcomes takes a hit on mental health. How thankful I am for my wife who aids me in every aspect of this journey and buoys my spirits.

I’m grateful to supportive friends and professionals who shared their inspirational, heart-wrenching, and at times, oddly humourous prostate cancer stories about how to prepare for the surgery, avoid complicating infections, manoeuvre with a clumsy catheter for two weeks, handle months of humbling stress-induced and involuntary incontinence, and relentlessly complete Kegel exercises to rebuild the pelvic floor muscle.

My recovery journey continues, likely in perpetuity, with radiation or hormone therapy potentially down the road.

While I’m not sure you should rely on your financial advisor to remind you to get a PSA test, I’m glad I took his advice.

Men, I’m passing it forward — ask your GP for that blood test.

Hopefully you won’t have to thank me.