Choosing a Path Forward With Courage
One of the first things you discover after a prostate cancer diagnosis is that there may not be one obvious path forward.
Surgery.
Radiation.
Hormone therapy.
Combinations of treatments.
Different doctors can look at the same cancer and recommend different approaches.
That can be reassuring because you have options.
It can also be terrifying because you have options.
I wanted someone to tell me, “Mike, this is clearly the right answer.”
Instead, I began realizing that cancer treatment often involves choosing among imperfect choices while trying to understand risks you never imagined you would have to consider.
For me, that decision ultimately led to radical prostatectomy.
I knew surgery came with potential consequences. Continence. Sexual function. Recovery. The possibility that surgery might not be the end of treatment.
But after asking questions, weighing the information available to us, and talking through the options with Sue, it became the path I believed I could move forward with.
That distinction matters.
I don’t believe there is one universally “right” prostate cancer treatment.
There is the treatment that makes the most sense for your disease, your priorities, your age, your health, your risk tolerance, and your life.
And that’s why I have become such a believer in asking one more question.
Not because doctors don’t know what they’re doing.
Quite the opposite.
I respect medical expertise enormously.
But physicians bring their knowledge of medicine.
You bring the knowledge of your life.
Both matter.
Eventually, there comes a moment when the research has to stop and the decision has to begin.
You choose.
Then you move forward.
I learned that courage isn’t certainty.
Sometimes courage is saying:
“I don’t know exactly how this will turn out—but this is the path I’m choosing.”
That was Mile Marker Two.
We had made a decision.
Next came the part neither of us could completely prepare for.
The Surgery.