First thought: What a gorgeous morning, even though thunderstorms predicted for later today. No big deal, they pass through quickly in Missouri, especially this time of year.

I found out yesterday that the prostate cancerous rodent within me has not spread to my bones. My bone scan came back clean. I do still need to have a CT scan tomorrow (was supposed to have had it after my bone scan but had miscommunication on scheduling). Doctor said “No harm, we aren’t losing time, usually the CT scan is clean when the bone scan is clean, just needs to be done for documentation “a marker” if you will.”

Our battle of attack against this nasty ass rodent (I even gave it a name…… prick) is to do Robotic Surgery. A surgeon from my Urologist’s office will do the procedure. I meet with him on August 29th, to discuss and schedule this little inconvenience. What a relief it was though that it was not in my bones! I was able to get a good nights sleep last night! I know that I am fortunate, much more than many, many others. We seem to have caught this at the right time. My Gleason count (which comes from my biopsy) was at 7. If we were at 6, maybe we do nothing, just keep an eye on it. But 7 is on the edge, where it is best to do something. Aggressive surveillance was an option but not recommended, since my Gleason Count was 7, an advanced enough stage to do surgery. Radiation is an option as well, except if you do radiation first and it doesn’t get it all, surgery really can’t be done, scar tissue from radiation makes surgery very difficult. My Urologist left it up to us (me and my “very” significant other). Robotic Surgery made more sense. Let’s just take “the prick” out now! Probably won’t have the surgery until middle to late September, early October at the latest. Oddly, my prostate must heal (reduce swelling) from the biopsy even though its being removed. With swelling they can’t get as good a view as they need/want. That takes about 4-6 weeks. So, we are looking at middle September to early October.

I had a conversation with the nasty rodent this morning, it went something like this: “You nasty little prick, you couldn’t even get outside my prostate, now you’re about to be destroyed! Sorry prostate, but you should not have let the prick in! We’ll say good-bye very soon!”

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, it means a lot and is helping. I feel much more confident we will beat this animal!