One Man's Perspective on Prostate Cancer

I'm awake any where from 19 to 21 hours per day 7 days a week.  What do I do to keep my mind busy? It's not easy, but here is where my mind wonders on home, ideas and odd research that makes me go huh? Let's start at home... Data Entry and My Wife - Why do I need to hear these Rants? My wife decided to show me a spreadsheet (only took her 3 years to show me this!) that she uses to keep her financials for her business organized. It has a sheet for every month and a summary one as well making a total of 13 sheets.  Each sheet has checks and balances and a long list of categories each within it's own column. If you add a new category then you have to add a new column and change the few hundred formulae that total up the columns.   To make matters even worst, when she enters the data she needs to scroll all over the sheet left and right a to possibly all the way to CJ just to make a single entry.  She paid a Registered Chartered Accounting Firm $1,000.00 for the spr...

It's been a while since my last blog post and it's about time I get you caught up on the latest.  I'm seriously arguing with Me, Myself and I, about posting YouTube videos instead of writing these long winded posts. Then I remind Myself , what do you know about video editing? Nothing! At some point I'll give it a try, but, who really wants to watch a video of me talking? lol. Chemotherapy Progress : Okay, back to the update.  As you may know I'm on an aggressive tri-thearpy treatment called ADT which involves Lupron-Depot, Docetaxel and Darloutamide.  ADT - androgen-deprivation therapy remains the principal treatment for patients with locally advanced and metastatic disease. Although a majority of patients initially respond to ADT, most after approximately 2 to 3 years will eventually develop castrate resistance cancer according to many of the research papers I have read.  The whole point in my case is to slow down the spread of the cancer - hopefully kill it off a...

  In this post I write about: Update on the past two weeks: Did you miss me?  Broken Dreams ;( Prostate Biopsy and Blood Work Results Response from the Minster of Health regarding the Doctor Shortage Canadian Cancer Research - St. Joseph's Hospital London, Ontario The Great Blog Mystery: Two weeks of Unexplained Silence April 22 to May 11th - Missing blog entries, can I blame it on writer's block? Nope, not really.  In the last week of April, not much took place so I didn't have much to write about - maybe a few sentences but that's about it.  Not really an excuse is it!  Well, maybe that statement is not completely true.  Let's do a review of the highlights: April 27th - Broken Dreams: Clean out of the Workshops  My wife arranged for a group of volunteers to help clean out the horrendous mess in the driveway at home and the two wood working shops.  Ten strong, hard working volunteers showed up early morning at the door, smiling and eager to start...

 In this post I write about: My Letter to Government Lab Testing, Reports and Cravings Audio Link can be found here: Click to Listen A Health System in Decline - Healthcare Crisis in New Brunswick As a resident of New Brunswick and in need of a family physician for monitoring my critical illness I decided to standup and speak out about the doctor crisis we have in New Brunswick.  According to the Department of Health in 2022, there were 74,000+ residences looking for a family doctor.  But in 2023 the Department of Health stated that that number had fallen to 59,000. Anyway you consider those numbers, it is unacceptable!  If you do have a doctor, how quickly can you get in to see them? Might be weeks - right?!  Turn to a nurse practitioner and yes, they can help to a certain extent as the tests they can order are limited.   When was the last time you saw a doctor in person?  My generation it was standard practice to get a physical exam once a year ...

In this week I'll discuss: Retiring Doctor Fredericton Prostate Group Meeting Audio Link can be found here:  Click to Listen Family Doctor Retiring - Woodstock, NB, Canada Late in the week I got a call from the office of Doctor Fran Alborg.  The conversation went like this: Dr. Office: Is this Rick? Rick: Yes. Dr. Office:  Dr. Fran Alborg is retiring, effective immediately. You will get a letter in the mail. Rick: Who is taking over for her? Dr. Office:  No one. Rick: I need a doctor it is critical. Dr. Office: You will get a letter in the mail. Rick: Excuse me, A retirement letter is not going to help. I need a referral. Dr. Office: I can't help you with that. Rick: I have Advance Level 4 Cancer that has metastasized into my bones and lymph nodes. I need a doctor! Dr. Office: I can setup an appointment for you to discuss with the doctor for next Tuesday. Rick: Okay, What time should I come In? Dr. Office: No, Dr. Alborg will call you, she will not be in the office. ...

What's on the Agenda This Week? You can now listen to the blog post : Click this link! Crazy Sleep Hours  What is NGS? Emotional Health Healing the Soul, Heart, Mind and Body The Digital Fab Lab Idea Medical Expenses and Life New Feature - Email Subscribe Crazy Sleep Hours and My Fitbit This past Christmas my wife got me a Fitbit watch which I haven't been using much.  She found it last week and told me to wear it (in a tone that I had no choice about it). I'm very OCD when it comes to technology tracking my statistics and reporting it back to the cloud for analysis. But now I see that it can provide some very useful insights, especially for those of us that have a critical condition such as myself. While I can verbally relate my lack of sleep to my wife and doctors, the Fitbit app provides hard statistics in a graphical form. As you can see below I'm typically getting less than 4 hours of sleep a night where most of it is light sleep with lots of awaking moments in bet...