Prostate Cancer Patient Stories

My decades-long career working for companies involved in the healthcare industry took me all over the United States, from the Northeast, to the Midwest, to the South. Years later, so did my cancer treatment, eventually leading me at Fox Chase Cancer Center.

I was treated for prostate cancer in 2016, getting radiation therapy near where I live in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It worked for a while, but not long enough, because in 2022 my PSA level started going up again.

At 73, I’m totally invested in my health and vigilant about keeping up with my doctors’ visits. When I went to my primary care physician in 2020, he alerted me that my PSA level was up, an indication that I had a problem with my prostate. I know the normal range is from 1 to 4. Mine was 5.2. “We’ll take another PSA down the road,” the doctor said. We did another one, and that was 5.6.

Nineteen years ago, just after I turned 60, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. I had noticed some blood in my urine, and the first doctor I talked to told me not to worry about it. Then over the next few months it got worse, and I decided to go to Fox Chase Cancer Center.

I’ve always been fastidious about getting my annual physical and bloodwork. Even in 2020, when COVID kept us all at home, I did a telemedicine visit. Of course, I couldn’t get bloodwork, but since I felt perfectly healthy, I just waited until my annual 2021 exam.

I was shocked when my prostate-specific antigen levels, also known as PSA, came back elevated; they’d jumped from less than 2 ng/mL to almost 9. I felt fine! I couldn’t imagine I had developed prostate cancer.