From the Beginning

Hello Everyone, First I want to thank my beautiful wife Karen for inspiring me to write this blog. I am blogging about Prostate cancer to help myself and, hopefully, others. So without further ado here goes.
I am a 100% disabled veteran with Stage 4 Prostate Cancer with bone mets (bone tumors). This journey started around January 2007 with a visit to my primary care doctor at Wright-Patterson Air Force base, Ohio. I was seeing my doctor because I was having lots of abdominal pain on my right, lower side. On the pain scale my pain rated a nine. This pain had been going on for about three months and I finally had had enough. Well this doctor's visit didn't go quite as I had hoped. My doctor decided that I was constipated! I was subjected to her brand of treatment for constipation and my pain continued. I saw her a couple of more times with the same end results-no relief from my pain.
Then in April I was getting some dental work at my local Veteran's Administration Medical Center or VA for short. I have all my dental work done at the VA wherever we live and any other medical procedure at either a military base or a Tri Care approved civilian doctor. The reason being that I had heard many of the rumors of bad care at some of the VA hospitals and I wasn't going to take any chances. So I have never had any treatment other than dental at the VA hospitals. I let the VA take care of my dental work because I was service connected for dental (I was shot in the mouth) and have always had excellent work done at the VA hospitals. When my dental work was done I was asked to go down to Primary Care and get vested. Vested means to pick your Primary Care doctor so you can be treated at the VA if you so desire. Even though I already had a primary care doctor on the air force base I decided that it would be a good idea to have an alternate doctor especially since the base doctor wasn't resolving my pain. So I went down to the VA Primary Care clinic and signed up. The PA (Physician's Assistant) was a young lady who was very thorough with my exam and questioning. She did the usual physical exam and ordered several labs. She asked me if I had ever had a PSA test. PSA stands for Prostate Specific Antigen and it is a screening tool for Prostate Cancer। I told her negative on the PSA test and she ordered one for me. I discovered later that I did indeed had a PSA in November 2005. That PSA reading was around 3.7. A PSA reading of 4.0 or below is considered normal. I was not told after the 2005 reading that I should have a PSA test every year. During the course of her questioning she discovered that I was in Vietnam and Cambodia where they used Agent Orange. I had read where AG can cause Prostate cancer. She set up a meeting immediately after our current exam with the Agent Orange representative. She also examined where my abdominal pain was and scheduled an appointment for me with my brand new primary care doctor I thanked her for being so thorough. I went across the hall to meet with the AG Rep and I signed the AG register so that I was recognized as a veteran that was officially exposed to Agent Orange. I left his office feeling like finally found someone who cared.

Peace and Love to All