WHERE DO I START?

There is a moment that I think many patients and families understand.

Maybe it happens while sitting in a doctor’s office.

Maybe it happens around the kitchen table after you get home.

Or maybe it happens at two o’clock in the morning when you’re staring at a lab result on your phone.

You suddenly realize:

That feeling has stayed with me throughout my prostate cancer journey.

Not because there wasn’t information available.

There was almost too much of it.

Search for one question and you find ten different answers. Watch one video and five more appear. Learn one new medical term and suddenly there are six more you’ve never heard before.

It can feel like trying to learn through a fire hose.

And when you are scared, tired, overwhelmed, and trying to make important decisions, more information isn’t always the answer.

Sometimes what you really need is simply:

Our Story Started on YouTube

When Sue and I began sharing our experience through Jonesing for the Journey, we weren’t trying to build a media platform.

We were documenting what was happening to us.

Cancer had changed our plans.

There were surgeries, treatments, decisions, setbacks, questions, and conversations we never imagined we would be having.

We started sharing because it felt important to be honest about what this experience really looked like.

Then something unexpected happened.

People started responding.

Patients shared their stories. Spouses told us what they were going through. Caregivers asked questions. Men newly diagnosed with prostate cancer reached out because they were standing in the same place I had once stood.

And gradually, Jonesing for the Journey stopped being only about our journey.

It became a conversation.

But YouTube Could Only Hold Part of the Story

YouTube has been an incredible place for us to connect with people.

But over time, I began to see a problem.

Someone might discover one of our videos because they had just received a PSA result.

Another person might be researching prostatectomy recovery.

Someone else might be trying to understand radiation or hormone therapy.

A spouse might be searching for resources to help the person they love.

The information existed.

But it was scattered.

That raised a question:

Not a place claiming to have every answer.

Not a replacement for doctors.

Not a medical textbook.

But a place where real patient experience, practical resources, advocacy tools, and honest conversations could live together.

That idea became:

JonesingForTheJourney.com

More Than a Website

The new website isn’t meant to be a digital brochure for our YouTube channel.

I want it to become something much more useful.

A place where someone can find:

Real Stories

Not perfect stories. Not polished versions of cancer.

Real life.

Mile Markers

Lessons we have learned along the way—sometimes because we got something right and sometimes because we wish we had understood it sooner.

Patient Advocacy Resources

Tools designed to help people prepare for conversations with their healthcare teams and become more active participants in their own care.

Resources for Spouses and Caregivers

Because cancer rarely happens to only one person.

Practical Recommendations

Things that have genuinely helped us through treatment, recovery, caregiving, travel, and everyday life.

And Perhaps Most Importantly: Better Questions

Because Sometimes the Question Matters More Than the Answer

One of the biggest lessons cancer has taught me is that you don’t always need to know the answer before walking into the room.

But you should know that you are allowed to ask the question.

That is where one of the core ideas behind Jonesing for the Journey came from:

It isn’t about challenging doctors for the sake of challenging them.

I am not anti-doctor.

I am pro-patient.

Doctors bring education, experience, and expertise to the conversation.

But the patient brings something equally important:

Their history.
Their priorities.
Their fears.
Their goals.
Their life.

The best healthcare conversations happen when those things meet.

Prostate Cancer Awareness Month Is About More Than Awareness

September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month.

Awareness matters.

Screening matters.

Knowing your numbers matters.

But I also believe awareness should include something else:

Helping people understand how to participate in what happens after the test, after the diagnosis, and after the treatment plan begins.

Because the question:

“Where do I start?”

doesn’t disappear when someone leaves the doctor’s office.

Sometimes that is when it becomes the loudest.

If Jonesing for the Journey can help even one person feel a little less lost in that moment, then building this new home was worth it.

This Is Only the Beginning

The site you see today isn’t finished.

I hope it never really is.

There will be more Mile Markers.

More resources.

More patient and caregiver stories.

More conversations.

More lessons from our own experience.

And hopefully more voices besides ours.

Because Jonesing for the Journey started with Mike and Sue.

But it was never meant to end there.

If you are standing at the beginning of a diagnosis, treatment decision, recovery, or life after cancer and wondering:

Where do I start?

Start by taking an active interest in your own rescue.

Start by learning your history.

Start by writing down your questions.

And then—

Ask one more.