Sept 2025 - 19 Months of Living with Prostate Cancer

It's been far too long since my last post and it's time for an update.  



September is here and that Prostate Awareness month. There is a Canada wide awareness campaign called  "Light Up in Blue". By lighting up your home or office with a blue light signifies your support for raising awareness for Prostate cancer and the importance for men to get a simple PSA blood test. The blood test can help early detection of Prostate Cancer. This is very important especially for men age 50 or older (in my opinion age 40 would be better).  Here is a link for the Light Up In Blue Campaign (scroll down for more awesome resources while on that site).

New Innovations in Treating Cancer: 

I have learned an important lesson in doing research. Always broaden the research searches to include data from other countries. North America is not the only continent doing cancer research. Example: see below.  

A very exciting and promising treatment which I came across in my research is a new vaccine out of Russia. Yes Russia! It's called EnteroMix which currently comes in two forms. The second form of the vaccines is very interesting. A genetic analysis of a patients tumor is analyzed and the EntroMix mRNA vaccine is personalized to train the body to recognize and eradicate the cancer cells.

Here is a link for your research: EnteroMix

Food and the Environment: In my opinion nearly everything is toxic in our environment these days, your body is constantly destroying cancers and filtering out toxins. If you overwhelm the system then yes that's a problem. If your diet is poor and full of oils, sugars and carbohydrates then your immune system is already compromised.  For the most part, the medical system would rather treat you with medications than tell you you should alter your diet and give your body a chance to fight off the disease. Of course, if you are in the situation like I am in with Stage 4 Cancer, then diet becomes a critical part of giving you added years. Positive attitude goes a long way as well. Visit and sign up for this course for learning more about diet, physical and mental health: PC PEP

Artificial Intelligence A.I. 

If you haven't heard A.I. is the in-thing now! Chat-GPT5 which was released August 7th/2025 and has vast improvements over the previous versions. One of the improvements is how accurate health information is from the new version.  Here is a very interesting link talking about how it was used to give clarity to a cancer patient.  Take a moment a listen to this section Chat-GPT5 Clarify Health Information 

Me, Myself and I - Health and Home

Lately I have been noticing some short term memory loss.  Let me explain, When I'm in the midst of doing multiple things or I am concentrating hard on a electronics and programing project it seems like I go into an automated mode where I know what I'm working on but (for example) I need my coffee refreshed.  I look down after a while and the coffee cup is full again. When did I do that? Another example is getting ready to go out in the morning and I'm looking for the keys to the truck. Oh, crap I already have them in my pocket.  This has only happened a couple of times in the past month, but it concerns me as it might signify a deeper issue that will manifest itself in the future or is this just another symptom of all the drugs I have been taking?

Sometimes I feel like I'm a medical experiment.  In the past 18 months I have had 5 CT scans, 2 X-Rays, lots of blood work and now in October I'm scheduled for an MRI of my spinal column and hips.  My rib cage has had three fractures since I was diagnosed in Feb 2024. The latest CT scan showed T6 has bone lost of 75% on the right side of the vertebra and T9 has a compression fracture. Having Stage 4 Cancer is no fun, between that and the drugs my bones are very brittle. I'm hoping after my MRI that I can talk to a spinal surgeon to find out what the options are. I'll let you guys know.

Mentally I can deal with the cancer, but the spine issues is a different story. It has me very stressed. When I first found out I was devastated and just cried knowing that another negative life changing event is on the horizon and possibly putting me in a wheel chair. So I asked Chat-GPT5 about my spine issues and the possible outcomes.  Here is what it stated:

  • Mechanical instability and further fractures:

    • The T6 level is already structurally compromised; it could collapse further or shift, and T9 could worsen.
    • New fractures can occur with minimal force, causing sudden, severe pain.

  • Spinal cord or nerve compression:

    • Thoracic levels (T6/T9) sit in front of the spinal cord. Tumor growth or further collapse can compress the cord.
    • This can cause leg weakness, numbness, gait problems, loss of balance, and, in severe cases, paralysis below the level of the injury.
    • Loss of bowel or bladder control can occur and may become permanent if not treated quickly.

  • Progressive spinal deformity and reduced function:

    • Increasing kyphosis (forward bend) can develop, leading to chronic pain, reduced mobility, difficulty standing upright, and reduced lung capacity/breathing reserve.

  • Uncontrolled pain and reduced quality of life:

    • Pain often worsens, including night pain and pain at rest, which can be difficult to control without targeted treatment.

  • Systemic complications from immobility:

    • Blood clots, deconditioning, pressure sores, constipation, and higher infection risk.
    • Less common but possible: high calcium levels from bone breakdown (more typical in other cancers than prostate, but can occur).

That's a lot to deal with - I can't dwell on it and need to keep moving forward. I hope that the medical community in New Brunswick will provide the proper medical attention and surgery that will prevent any of this from happening in a timely manner.  By the way I was told an emergency MRI through the province can take up to 2 years. I'm having the MRI done privately in Moncton.

To Michele, my wife: Your love is never ending and remains a constant and unwavering force in my life. Thank you for your endless patience, kindness, care and support as we go through this. I am truly blessed to have you as my wife. Believe me, I know it's harder on you than it is on me.

What's Keeping me Busy and Sane? 

Home Electronics Updates: As you may or may not know our house has no light switches! It does have a huge amount of sensors for monitoring temperature, humidity, light and motion. I felt it was time for some of these devices to be updated and start moving all the propitiatory coding I have done to a system call Home Assistant. This will make the electronics and systems in the home more friendly to a new owner if the home is ever sold.  Home Assistant is an open source system with thousands of users available for technical questions.  Basically I'm getting the home ready for possible sale next spring.

So, I have been coding and building/updating these sensors along with some new control panels to make the home even better.  By the way, I monitor everything in the home electricity, heat, light, motion.... since the house was built in 2015-2016.

 


Small Electronic Projects: I enjoy building electronics and programing.
There is a lot of detail that programing covers, data collection techniques, databases, communication methods, sampling times, graphing and use of the data collected, automated triggers and decisions to control other devices, interfacing computers, devices and controllers.... the list goes on.  All of this is in my home.  But what else can I do with the knowledge?  

I had a need to keep track of trips in my truck. I wanted a solution with the following features:

  1. Automatically start a trip on movement.
  2. Automatically end a trip when vehicle is idle in the same position for 4 minutes of more.
  3. Automatically keep a log of the waiting time between trips.
  4. Keep the data for each trip for import into Google Earth.
  5. Provide a quick summary in CSV format of each trip distance, weekly total distance traveled, waiting time log.
  6. Maximize battery life by shutting down screen and putting the system into a deep sleep mode when not moving.
  7. Automatically wake up and start a new trip when vehicle is moved more than 5 meters.
  8. Save all the data to an SD.
  9. Export the data via WiFi. 

Nothing was available off the shelf so I built a prototype based on a device that had a ESP32, an OLED screen and a GPS in a nice little package. The programming is portable to a custom device if I didn't need the screen output or if I wanted to create a custom circuit board and case.


 The prototype is working great after several iterations of coding. I find it useful for keeping track of the kilometers per trip and the amount of time I spent at each location when picking up items for a friend that loves to shop for great deals on market place.  

This project, like many others, has been developed to address a particular need by automating and simplifying a task that is often tedious and susceptible to errors. If you have an intriguing project that requires a solution, please do not hesitate to reach out. Even if you are unsure of all the criteria involved, we can collaborate to find a suitable solution together.


Take a Sailing Adventure: In early September my wife and I booked a sailing tour out of Hackshaw, NB. During the sail the tour, we given history of the land highlighting the flooding of the Saint John river above the Mactaquac dam back in the early 1960s. The stories and the items left in the path of that are amazing.  The scenery was amazing but the company was even better, very nice people! We highly suggest this tour by Kim and Faye - Beyond Expectations Sailing Tours

 

 

 

For fun here is photo of me sailing in GrandBay-Westfield back in 2012. Amazing just how fast time flies by!