Prostate Cancer History

Helen Valier, A History of Prostate Cancer, 2016, Palgrave MacMillan.

    This is the best book I’ve found that covers the scope of prostate cancer—history, treatments, research. There are quite a few articles that deal with specific topics in a limited way, but Helen Valier has brought everything together, and her book answers most of my questions. I say most because her book came out in 2016, and medical advances have continued to occur over the last seven years. One example is the development of the PSMA-PET test that can detect trace amounts of cancer cells that traditional scans miss.

Dying, Not Dying

 Can I speak about dying if I’m not dying, or do all my thoughts stay speculative rather than grounded in reality? At least, I don’t think I’m dying, and my oncology doctor says I won’t die from prostate cancer. Yet, sometimes men do. The American Cancer Society expects that 288,300 American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2023, and 34,700 men will die.

Prostate Distillate

 

If you’re a man, you are likely to develop prostate cancer at some point. This will generally happen when you’re older/old, and in most cases, it will be so slow growing that you will die of something else before your prostate becomes a problem. That’s good news.