Prostate cancer may not be as deadly as lung cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer and cervical cancer. Cancer, in the zodiac sign is symbolized by one of my favorite dish, a crab. Yet the term cancer when referred to one's health will send shivers down the spine to anyone not only the affected patient but all his relatives and friends. Cancer is horrifyingly evil that the superstitious,quacks and sorcerers will call all the spirits to drive away the evil.
Anyway, today is Father's Day. Most everyone will suggest to all fathers above 40 to have check up with their doctors to detect early troubles of their prostate glands. I know this by my own experience. I was diagnosed with this disease seven years ago, even after when I had heart by pass surgery and a stroke in 2005. My heart problem was noticed even when I was only 42. And that the stroke came as a complication of my prostate enlargement that squeezed my urinal canal.
During the heart surgery I was told by the doctors that I had urinal problems but minor only, unlike my clogged heart that I could drop to kingdom come at any time. I recall that my blood pressure that time then was hovering at 210/100 to 240/110. So the quadruple heart operation.
At the recovery room at St. Luke's when I woke up the next day, I called up the nurse or the doctor to complain I cannot pee my bladder was exploding that I was in extreme and terrible discomfort. After an hour or more when there was no doctor or nurse (thanks to St. Luke's) I decided on my own to pull out the catheter. And what a sigh of relief! I stood up and peed into the urinal. But that was the worst thing that happened to me deprived of nurse or doctor, I suffered a stroke that until today half my body is paralyzed. I did not put all the blame to St. Luke's when there was no nurse or doctor at the time I needed them most, even if we spent over a million for that hospital stay.
When I was released and got back home, I resolved just for my own self comfort that it was my enlarged prostate that squeezed my urinary tract that prevented urine flow that eventually triggered the stroke.
Now, in my retirement years, my advise to all fathers above 40 this Father's day see your doctors to check early signs of prostate gland troubles. I tell you I'm not afraid of prostate cancer. When I was diagnosed and ordered by the doctor to undergo chemo or radiation, I humbly refused by the thought that in chemo alone I could be finished and sent to the departure area ready for delivery to kingdom come. But in truth I continously search and research on alternative cure until this day. I know that prostate specific antigin (psa) test is not reliable and very controversial that even the founder, Dr. Ablin, if I'm not mistaken, said he did not dream his discovery 40 years ago would become a hoax, a money-making machine. I also know that prostate cancer is slow-growing that with a strictly observed healthy diet, as I am now doing, one can live with the disease up to 25 years.
So, I said to myself I won't need 25 years, tanda na yon.
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