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So they asked Will Rogers why presidents of the most powerful nation in world would invite him back inauguration after inauguration to make fun of them with clever sarcastic humor. ” They’re big people,” he said. Robert Cooper Davis was big people my friend.

After my mother’s divorce she and her 5 boys “showed up” on her mother’s steps in LaGrange, Georgia circa 1968. In the summer the customary thing to do was to sit on the porch and have an ice cold small bottled Coke from Davis Pharmacy over ice sitting on the porch at 103 North Lewis Street. My grandmother had many interesting stories about things she witnessed at that address and from that porch. One of which is when the First Presbyterian Church was on fire right there in front of our porch (We lived across the street from that church) and the Fire Department flew right by the burning…

I remember the things  that went through my head when the realization that I had prostate cancer took hold. For me the toughest part was waiting on the biopsy and wondering if I had the “bad” kind. I now refer to that as the Frank Zappa kind. Then there was the part of knowing I had a ” reasonable kind” and the emotional journey that that entailed. Telling people you love, how to tell associates, when to tell friends and patients. After the diagnosis all the stuff is set in motion to deal with the problem and arranging for all the details. What to do, who to do it, where, when? It helps in a way, to get your mind off the problem. It moves from ” I have cancer ” to ” what am I going to do about it ” and that in away helps one move on and is a bit…

The subjects which people search for and then ultimately end up on this blog are very informative.  Castrasted monks is a popular one. Another is prostate  humor and famous people with prostate cancer. I have addressed these previously.

The issue of a man being told his PSA is high and then he has a biopsy that does not show cancer is also commonly searched. “High PSA negative biopsy.”  What does this mean? Does it mean that you had a unecessary biopsy or that the PSA is a terrible test, or that your urologist subjected to torture for monetary gain  alone?

Well, it means that for some reason you produce more PSA than the “average bear.” (That’s Yogi speak.) The chances are that your particular PSA is the norm for you and that you will never develop prostate cancer. If you were my patient, however, I’d advise a twice  a year…

Well…I see patients all the time who have had an elevated PSA in the past and their family M.D. put them on 2 weeks of Cipro and then had the PSA repeated. Often times the PSA will go to normal and the family M.D. will then repeat a PSA at say 6 months. Often times it is elevated again and then the patient is sent to the urologist. This scenario happened this morning in my office. The patient wanted to do antibiotics again and then repeat the PSA again before consenting to a biopsy. A reasonable approach. We redrew the PSA. His father, a doctor, told him not to consent to a biopsy and this was the patient’s mindset before I saw him as a patient. What we will do in terms recommendations will be heavily influenced by this patient’s preconceived ideas.

My PSA was high and I did a…

Question: I have a 70 yo friend with a strong fam hx of prostate cancer — his father died of it.  Despite a psa of 1.2, he recently had a nodule felt by his family doctor and his urologist on dre, which was followed by a biopsy that was negative — no cancer, and nothing else unusual found.  His urologist told him yearly exams were all he needed at this point.  Would you be more aggressive?  Please explain.

The term “nodule” is used a bit broadly and even I in yesterdays video with Penelope spoke of a nodule in “broad strokes.”

• A true palpable prostatic cancer nodule of the prostate would most commonly show cancer on biopsy.
• It is very common for the prostate to have asymmetry and I am sure the doctor or the patient “mis-communicates” exactly what the exam revealed. I could see me telling a patient that I felt…