Mikel Kelly: There's a lot going on in the world, but at the end of the day, nothing means 'as much as my own health'

On Monday, June 15, I celebrated the 20th anniversary of the day I was told by a physician's assistant at Kaiser Permanente, following a biopsy conducted by that very same man (at Mother Joseph Plaza annex, next door to St. Vincent Hospital), that I had tested positive in five out of six samples taken for prostate cancer.

It was June 15, 2000, and even though it seemed like every other famous man over 50 was announcing to the world that they had this same brand of cancer, it completely floored me. I was 52 and otherwise very healthy.

It was almost embarrassing how little I knew about this disease, but because I had to sort through the various "treatments" (which included, oddly enough, doing nothing) I quickly learned a whole lot about it.

First of all, I discovered I was lucky. Of all the kinds of cancer out there, prostate cancer is one of the most common but even more important, one of the slowest moving. People who contracted breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, esophageal cancer and others soon learned that time is of the essence, and in most cases, the earlier discovered the better.

My most immediate challenge was to learn as much about the disease as possible and then choose the kind of attack I was going to employ.

My cousin Dennis, in Seattle, was a few months ahead of me in his own fight with the disease, and he quickly rounded up a huge bundle of magazine articles, medical reports and journals on the subject and sent them to me. He had chosen the therapy in which they plant a number of radioactive seeds in the walnut-size organ.

There was also a lot of support for the "normal" radiation treatment, where they blast you down there in the groinal region with the invisible rays 35 times every week day for seven weeks (more about this approach later).

The do-nothing option was never appealing to me. Maybe if I was 75 or 80 at the time, I'd consider it because they say it's such a slow-growing cancer it's not that hard to outlive it. Usually, the medical folks tell you, you'll die of something else entirely.

No, I selected what they called "the gold standard" the surgery where they cut a hole in you (eerily similar to the slice one makes when cleaning a trout) and remove the whole enchilada. My own surgery was of the "nerve sparing" variety, meaning the doctor I settled on, Chris Mershon, would as delicately as possible try to extract the prostate from the web of nerves surrounding it which, in turn might allow me to retain sexual function, no small item to a 52-year-old fellow. It was a success, I was told, and I was further advised that I came through it with good margins.

But (you knew there would be a "but" didn't you?), almost exactly five years later, my PSA (the prostate specific antigen, the number all prostate cancer sufferers live and die by) began to rise again.

Unfortunately, at exactly that moment in time, the company I worked for announced that it would no longer include Kaiser Permanente in the insurance choices we were offered -- so, with the help of my doctor, I picked a new physician to handle my care, a Legacy urologist, Dr. Bruce Lowe, and together we sorted out the options and settled on radiation therapy as my next adventure.

Unlike the prostatectomy I underwent back in 2000, the radiation is the treatment that really kicked my butt. Though the actual treatment, in the opening weeks of 2006, went smoothly enough, the after-effects in subsequent years were significant. As time went by, I lost all sexual function, and have had a continual battle with urinary incontinence. Then, this February I was subjected to an even more serious indignity that no one had ever mentioned up to then: blood clots in the bladder that had me climbing the walls of the Good Samaritan ER until they finally poked a drain in me to take the pressure off. Apparently, this blood clotting thing is not uncommon in cases where radiation has been used.

So, while everybody else was staying home and staying safe, I was making numerous and repeated visits to see health professionals, my urologist in Portland, the surgeon in Seattle who installed an artificial sphincter in me two years ago to control my peeing (which was damaged during my ER adventure and no longer was working) AND my brand new medical oncologist (Dr. Julie Graff and her team) at the OHSU Knight Cancer Center, where I began a new round of treatment because my PSA had decided to swing back up again.

This latest attack on my cancer is a ferocious brand of hormone treatment, called androgen deprivation therapy in which I get a shot in the belly fat every three months, along with a fairly aggressive "oral chemo" that involves me taking a couple of horse pills every day exactly two hours after breakfast and at least an hour before lunch. The side effects of this round of treatment is significant, though not yet intolerable. They mostly consist of fierce hot flashes about every hour, along with a tendency to poop out quickly during uphill walks.

So, this is why I'm kind of losing touch with all that's going on out there in the real world the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests going on in pretty much every community of any size, the financial tailspin that everybody but the very wealthiest in our nation is in and the utter lack of leadership from the White House.

All of those things worry me a lot. Not as much as my own health, maybe, but still a lot.

Stay safe out there. And if you're a guy and there's any history of prostate cancer in your family, get it checked. If you do, you might be lucky enough to hang around a few more years, like me.

Mikel Kelly, a former editor with Pamplin Media Group, retired from Community Newspapers a little over four years ago. He no longer chases fire trucks and police sirens, but he does have a tendency to send in these "observations" to us.

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Opinion: This month my cancer turned 20, but I am still standing - Pamplin Media Group

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