A wife's perspective on prostate cancer

Jennifer Szakach of Scottsdale provided a wife’s perspective on prostate cancer.

“The diagnosis was a shock to me because while we knew he had a high PSA reading, his brother had had false readings in the past and we thought that would be the case with John. Dr. Darson was emphatic that John have the surgery within 2 months, so everything happened very fast. I was only involved with one meeting with the doctor and relied mostly on John’s explanations for what to expect. As you can imagine, he kept most of his deepest concerns to himself. We did not know how widespread the cancer would be. You can imagine my concern when 3 ½ hours went by and he still wasn’t out of surgery. In all it was about 5 hours before Dr. Darson came out to tell me that John was fine but the cancer had been more widespread that he expected and it required a lot more work to remove it all. He said that we were very lucky to have had the surgery when we did.”

John was very uncomfortable when he came out of surgery and it was difficult for me to see him in such a vulnerable state. Little did I know that he would be needing my help for quite some time after the surgery. Because of the catheter, John wasn’t allowed to ride in a car. He couldn’t move around very well and getting out of bed was very difficult and painful for him. He couldn’t lift anything, which was good for him because we had moved into a new home 3 days before the surgery! He recovered on schedule and was back to work in a few weeks.
John’s first reaction when he received to diagnosis was to keep it to himself. He is an extremely private person. I told him that I understood and respected his choice but I hoped he would reconsider. In his current job he is one of the oldest in an office full of mostly young men. I encouraged him to think about all of the good he could do by talking openly about this to the people that he works with, especially emphasizing the importance of the PSA test. Also, I thought it would be important to have the support of our friends and family while we went through the experience. To my surprise, he did think about it and embraced the idea. He told everyone at work about it and became a mentor of sorts to friends of friends who were also going through the first scary stages of the diagnosis. As you know, he also rewrote a “what to expect” type brochure for the doctor’s office. I truly believe that being helpful to others has been therapeutic to him during his recovery. We have a close friend who is a testicular cancer survivor and he once told us that he didn’t feel right getting involved in cancer support groups because he didn’t feel like he had a “real” cancer. When there are no outward signs, no chemotherapy, hair loss, or weight loss, I think that men tend to downplay the seriousness of these cancers. It’s easy to pretend that you didn’t just have a brush with mortality when you didn’t feel sick to begin with. I’m proud of the way John has helped others and in turn has helped himself. The recovery process is not an easy one and it really helps to know that there are others out there who have walked down that road before.