Years ago I was coming home from work and saw this old-fashioned office chair in the trash of a friend’s house. It was on the curb and placed to be picked up by the garbage folks. I pulled over and looked it over and brought it home. I put it in my den, much to the chagrin of my wife, and positioned it next to the fire-place. I loved to watch American Idol in it and sip on scotch. My wife let me keep it there for about a year and one day “pulled the plug.” I took it out to the lake to the table pictured above and in this chair I wrote the majority of my book.  The chair is positioned so in the cabin at the lake that I can throw sticks through the front door, through the porch to the outside yard for Penelope to chase and then bring back to me. If I am lucky the stick will traverse uninterrupted the various portals and then be of such diameter that she will play with a while before bringing it back to me…thereby allowing a bit more time for me to write. The next best option would be for her to bring it back in, but instead of dropping at my feet and barking, just chew on it or about 20 minutes until it is a shredded mess. In this case the clean up is worth the time gained. The later scenario ends with her dropping a small portion of the stick, almost like the size of a cigar, at my feet to then begin the whole process over again.

I told my friend that I was the one who took his chair and he told me a bit of history about it and for this history I will never part with this chair. My friend married the daughter of the first general surgeon of our city. At the time I took the chair this surgeon was in his eighties and was somewhat a local icon. The chair was his office chair for many years and then I guess upon retirement gave it to my friend. He kept it for years and then he and his wife must have felt it’s being old and squeaky out weighed the historical and sentimental value. I am big on sentimental and historical value. In the cabin seen above is a chair from my grandmother’s house in which my grandfather died. My grandmother said , ” I heard Cooper say,’Bess’ and when I went to see what he wanted he was slumped over in the chair by the door in the television room as peaceful as you please and dead.”

See the microphone….you guessed it Podcasts. I enjoy doing those, over 800 listens on Podbean, however I don’t know what real benefit it ads to those wishing to learn more about prostate cancer. I think I’ll start doing mini-chapters from portions of my book that I think someone might find interesting.  Consider listening to “Waiting on the biopsy” and see if you can relate if you have been through it or empathize with a loved one who has been through the process.

The last line of this article is excellent and a point that needs to be understood (the ramifications of) by all men facing the difficult decision of what to do with their newly diagnosed prosate cancer.

Active surveillance versus radical treatment for favorable-risk localized prostate cancer.