BEATNICK WRITES PROSTATE CANCER INTO HIS AUTOBIO

When my father turned 77, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I recall the time we stood side by side at a public urinal in Dayton, Ohio when he said, mournfully, "I guess mine is the aggressive kind." He died a few months after he turned 80. The cancer had spread into his hips, spine and into his brain. From that time, I've been waiting for my own aggressive prostate cancer to appear. 

Since arriving in Vancouver, WA. 7 or 10 years ago, I've been expressing that worry to my new physician, and we've been testing my PSA. I've watched it climb above four [0 - 4 is normal] and into the fives. A growing prostate is common in elderly men as almost everyone knows, but not always cancerous, then, a little over a year ago, after my wife switched me to a vegan [according to her, cancer fighting] diet, my PSA declined to 4.7, then 4.3, but two weeks ago my PSA made a 2.8 point leap to 6.1. The leap was enough to cause my doctor to set up an appointment for 3 months from now to check my PSA again. I'm 77 as this situation begins to unfold. Already, in my vivid imagination, I'll be dead sometime after I turn 80, and I'm slightly pissed my doctor didn't give me a rectal exam on the spot to see if cancer nodes might already be malforming my prostate. I believe I'll have many things to say about all the odd ways my life feels to me with this intensified worry plaguing me—death portrayed in emotional movies I see with my wife, incidents recalled from my past, sports games that ought to seem trivial now, but I still get worked up over, my suicide attempt when I was 31—or was it 32—everything that enters my head is suddenly coated with a patina of unsettling emotion. This sudden leap in PSA also slightly alters the question I began writing this blog with: Can I get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine before I die [with the new stipulation, of course] die of prostate cancer? Just saying it aloud scares hell out of me, and that's why I'm saying it. 

The photo is of me and my dad during WWII when I felt like an orphan, living with my grandparents, and he was working in Bridgeport, Connecticut, making bombs long before either of us had the slightest worry about prostate cancer, the number two cause of death in the male half of the population.