Eight words that changed my life, and might save it

Eight words changed my life.

Three weeks ago my doctor stepped into the examination room, closed the door and said, "Have a seat, Ken, we've got a problem."

The problem was the paperwork he held in his hand. It was a pathology report from what I considered a routine biopsy of my prostate. Turned out it wasn't routine at all.

The biopsy was positive, he said.

I let those words wash over my brain and body for a few seconds, hoping they would land on somebody else's life. But they didn't.

I immediately understood the consequences.

"So, I have prostate cancer?"

"Yes," he said.

I'm not sure I heard the next few things he said. My mind was racing around looking for a place to hide. But the room was small. There was no place to go. It was just me, the doctor and the paperwork.

Later, walking to the parking lot in dazed disbelief, I tried to reconstruct that conversation, as I have many times since.

He said something about surgery. About it not being the end of the world. About high survivability rates.

I hope it's all true.

But I don't trust cancer.

Blindsided

I am 57 years old, the same age as my father when he died.

He was a tank commander for Gen. George S. Patton in World War II. A hell of a guy. But colon cancer took him quickly, quietly, without regard to all the good he had done in his life.

That was 30 years ago. Medical marvels being what they are these days, I felt good about making it through this benchmark year without incident.

I have annual physicals.

I've had three colonoscopies.

I don't drink. I don't smoke.

But I was blindsided by my prostate.

Truth is, I don't feel sick. I have no symptoms.

A month ago, I didn't even know where my prostate was. Now, I know it intimately.

For the record, it's a tiny organ about the size of a walnut that directs traffic in the male urinary and reproductive system. We've all got one, and we're all going to have trouble with it, sooner or later.

Mine came sooner. It started with an elevated PSA (prostate-specific antigen) number which led to a biopsy which led to this moment of truth.

If diagnosed early, success rates are high. It's said to be slow-growing. Of all the words you can hear in front of cancer, prostate is considered better than several ugly alternatives.

Fixable. Survivable. These are the phrases you cling to in those wakeful moments of quiet honesty just before you fall asleep.

Weekly updates

They say 80 percent of all males in the United States will get prostate cancer if they live long enough. That's why I'm writing about it.

Chances are, prostate cancer will come into your family's life as it did mine. Quite suddenly.

One day I was invincible.

The next I was vulnerable.

It's a sea change, a seismic shift, a slap in the face.

But you adjust, you adapt, you advance. My favorite saying has become, "All you can do is all you can do."

My surgery is scheduled for April 17 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. During the next few weeks and months, leading up to surgery and then recovery, I'm going to try to tell you what it's like - the fears, the facts, the funny stuff, the fallacies, the impact on families and, ultimately, the future.

This effort will appear in a weekly column each Monday, beginning tomorrow, in The Post and Courier's Health & Science section.

I hope it will help you as much as it will help me.

Indeed, it already has helped me, because now I know what I want to be when I grow up - a cancer survivor.

For more information

For more information about prostate cancer or for a listing of local support groups, contact the American Cancer Society's Charleston office at 744-1922.

Reach Ken Burger at 937-5598 or kburger@postandcourier.com.