Fit as a Fiddle - and then!!
After a weekend of racing and picking up two gold medals at the WA State Marathon Championships I was feeling pretty good Sunday evening. With the fact that I had paddled over 10,000kms in the last 9 months my fitness couldn’t get that much better, so I was on a roll and nothing could stop
me.
However on Monday afternoon I had an appointment with my urologist to see how my current PSA blood levels were going. He greeted me with, ” how are you going”. “Really great, I feel as fit as a fiddle”, I said. “I have just paddled 10,300 kilometres since June so I can’t get much
fitter”.
There was a pause. He looked at the computer and said - unfortunately your PSA has gone up to .2 which means that the cancer has most likely returned.
Wow I must admit I wasn’t expecting to hear that on this visit. My PSA had been going up slightly over the last 3 years, then for one six month period it didn’t move at all so I wasn’t expecting to hear the bad news for another two to three years.
So what are my options? You could go to see a specialist straight away but it may be difficult to detect where the cancer is at this stage or you could wait three months get another blood test and decide what actions to take then. He did say that he was pretty sure my PSA levels would not go
down so treatment would be necessary sometime soon.
Fit as a Fiddle one day – having to decide in a moment or two on a life decision the next. I think I will take the second option I said, - just like it was choosing something from a quiz.
I rang Jenny before leaving and you can imagine that she was more shocked and upset than me. Although I had the radio on when driving home I don’t think I really took in the music as I had other things on my mind.
The last time I was told I had Prostate Cancer, nearly 4 years ago Jenny and I celebrated by going to McDonalds as it was crappy news, so we needed some crappy food. This time we just opened a bottle of wine at dinner and wondered where things were going from here.
The next morning I continued my days routine. We took Nikki for a walk and then I started paddling for 4 hours to paddle 26-28 kilometres. I keep being asked what I think about when paddling for so long. I never know how to answer that question because my thoughts go all over the place and
think about so many different things and often I’m not even remembering what I’m thinking about. I think that sometimes I think about nothing, but can you think about nothing!!
Anyway this morning I really had something to think about and I think I spent all those 4 hours thinking about the cancer and what the future was going to bring.
So what is going to happen in the next few months? What is the success rate of getting through the next stage? Am I going to be sliding to my death?
As I paddled I was also thinking – I should start selling some of my 50 boats I have. Which ones should I sell though? What if I don’t die in the next year or two I might need them? But what if I get too weak to paddle?
I then thought I must start writing a book about my life - a few people might be interested in my story, but I don’t have much time at the moment as I’m paddling 6-7 hours a day so that will have to wait.
Oh dam, now with the likelihood of reaching 80 being in jeopardy means I might not get the opportunity of breaking Ray Smith’s paddle records that he has have achieved at 80.
There were so many things that I thought about that morning. Luckily I didn’t take those thoughts to bed and not sleep. The following days I started to have happier thoughts.
Men take note - my cancer crept up without me having any symptoms. My waterworks were good, my whole body was good so if you are a man and getting on, make sure you get regular blood tests.
