Diagnosis. Shock. And How to say Goodbye.

It took a couple of days just to absorb the diagnosis.

How do you deal with something like this? It's not like there's a playbook. And, unfortunately, I'd watch my brother die from cancer 10 years earlier. Nothing he tried worked. So, what are the alternatives?

Grasping for Answers

​Getting the diagnosis sent me reeling for a brief time. My wife and I shed some tears and my first thoughts included how do I tell my family and many friends. I was preparing a long goodbye and wondering how to manage all that while on heavy medication.

Priorities Reveal Themselves

But what I was most concerned about wasn't me but rather the friends and family who would be affected by this. After all, if the doctor was right, I'd be gone in 24 months. What about them and their grief? But most of all, I worried about what this would do to my wife who would have to live through the hell of caring for me until death would take us apart.

It wasn't about me.

We only know ourselves through others.

It's worse than telling someone they are going to lose a limb. When someone we know well passes, we don't just lose them physically, we lose a part of ourselves -- because it's only through others that we know who we are. I'm not financially wealthy, but in the old world sense, I am one of the wealthiest people I know because I've been the part of so many lives; friends to more people than I can count. How do you tell them you're leaving?

LOOKING BACK

I got stuck in a window of time when AMA practices were such that doctors were instructed to take a "Watchful Waiting" approach with guys who's prostate specific antigens (PSA's) went above 4. This approach nearly cost me my life -- as it did to some unfortunate men before the AMA decided to drop the approach. I could be a poster boy for Watchful Waiting.