About a year and a half ago, my Doctor noticed that my PSA was rising and he said, “Look, I’m not liking this, but let’s kind of do another 3 months, we’ll take another sample and see where it goes,” and then after that 3-month sample, he said “Look, I’m still not liking this. I don’t want to do a biopsy, but we need to do one.” I said, “Doc, listen, whatever is necessary, let’s get it done.”
After the first one, things were normal and then, another 6 months later, another blood sample. The PSA was over 5. I said, “Alright, we need to go in.”
I had some idea about the disparity thing in prostate cancer and because I was in a circle of men, we played basketball on weekends and we talk about all kinds of things. It was more about the camaraderie than us playing.
I was diagnosed in 2013, November. When I received the news, I wasn’t crestfallen. I don’t think I was shocked. I said “Okay, here I am, 50-something male, would ever be prone to prostate cancer?” and I think, that for me was, I had to kind of process that out loud.
It was the immediate inner family circle that needed to know and I have two younger brothers and my dad is still alive. He’s soon to be 85. He has an enlarged prostate, but he has no symptoms and no other issues, but I called my brother’s wife and I said, “Listen, this is what’s happening. You need to get checked out. It’s now part of the family tree.”
I didn’t want to broadcast it, partly because it was a private matter for me and the matter in which I needed to go about the treatment was something I certainly needed to face and for those in my circle of friends who I needed to get to, they understood and they said, “William, whatever it is that we can do to help you along the way, we’re there,” and it was really just a matter of phone call.
I had a lot of stress and the challenges of being a university administrator but I said, I was not going to allow anything else to get in the way of my treatment.
I was