My internet provider has had real problems with its news feed for
months now, so I haven't been keeping up with postings here. (I
scheduled a switch from DSL to cable just to get a better news feed,
and surprise, the DSL provider finally switched to a different news
provider, and it finally started working this weekend!)

Anyway, after an intial diagnosis of agressive prostate cancer at age
50, (Gleason 7, initial PSA of 169 (no decimal place, almost two
hundred!), I then had my treatment post-poned when they found cancer
in a kidney as well. The kidney cancer turned out to be fairly mild
and they think they got it all with surgery taking a bit off one end
of the kidney, but leaving my some pretty good scars :-)

I was given Lupron, told it is was too late for surgery, given some
nice targeted X-rays (where they hit me from 4 sides to minimize the
burn in any one spot) and finally implanted with some tubes into the
prostate, and a nuclear physicist calculates where to put 3 doses of
high powered x-rays over 2 days.)

The good news was after the first x-ray treatment my PSA dropped to
under 10, then a month after the second high powered x-ray my PSA
dropped to under one, a mere 0.86.

I am not cured, but I guess this is a whole lot better than I started
with. The doctor said we just take it day by day now, and do PSA test
every 3 months or so. In thsi group, people die and stop posting, or
get better and stop posting, and a few soldier on and give advice to
us new comers. Anyway, I wanted to say thanks to everyone and report
some GOOD news for a change. I will report bad news later.

So I may have a second chance at life as I approach age 51, and I am
working real hard on enjoying life the best I can, and not waiting for
later, as I was earlier in life.

cagoodey@NOMORESPAMplease!yahoo.com (I went up from about 50 spams a
day to 150 recently, not sure why, but it is hard to find the real
email in all the spam :-(