Three Black Prostate Cancer Survivors share their experiences with non-invasive HIFU procedure
Three Black Prostate Cancer Survivors share their experiences with non-invasive HIFU procedure BY THE BLACK WALL ST TIMES APRIL 10, 2020 By Shelly Gordon Three African American men: Reggie Dye, a healthcare executive, Thomas Newell, a retired basketball referee for youth at risk and Victory Murray, NASA lead engineer whose team repaired Apollo 13, wanted a better way to treat their prostate cancer – one that promises a better quality of life post-treatment than surgery and radiation which are the standards of care. These two procedures can come with a greater risk of urinary incontinence, erectile dysfunction, and penile shrinkage. When diagnosed with localized prostate cancer, they each selected a noninvasive procedure called High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU). They got together to share each of their stories about their HIFU treatment, which is widely used across the world, but still relatively new in the United States, with select physicians across the country delivering the treatment. HIFU is a noninvasive focal-therapy procedure that destroys targeted prostate tissue using extremely precise high-frequency sound waves that heat up and burn off only the diseased portion of the prostate, sparing surrounding tissue and nerves. This reduces the risk of common side effects associated with […] read more
How Ben Stiller Survived Prostate Cancer
How Ben Stiller Survived Prostate Cancer Talking about a cancer diagnosis is tough. Talking about prostate cancer for men is really tough. But talking about protate cancer when you are a public figure in the prime of your career is off the charts scary. And courageous! So, a huge “Thank You” to Ben Stiller for taking the time to write an essay about his recent prostate cancer experience and to urge men to talk with their doctors about prostate cancer and their risk. Over the past 10 years men in America have been caught in the middle of a disagreement within the medical community about the value of the PSA (prostate specific antigen) blood test in beating prostate cancer. Half of the medical community believes the test is worthwhile and half don’t. The United States Preventative Services Task Force even recommends that men don’t ever test for prostate cancer. But here are some facts and statistics that men and their families should know and consider . . . 240,000 men every year are diagnosed with prostate cancer 24,000 of those new cases will be aggressive, early onset prostate cancer about 28,000 men die every year from prostate cancer – more […] read more U.S. Rep. Mark Takai dies after a nine month battle with pancreatic Cancer
U.S. Prepresentative Mark Takai dies from pancreatic cancer. Early detection is critical in all cancers. read more Bicycling Helps Keep Cancer In Check
Bicycling Helps Keep Cancer in Check by Robert Warren Hess In this post, I’m going to tell you how I began cycling and how it plays a key role in my cancer recurrence prevention plan. My goal with these posts is to give cancer survivors tools and encouragement you can use on your cancer journey. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer just over 13 years ago. At that moment, I joined the ranks of 14 million other Americans who are ‘cancer survivors.’ The picture at right is me working with my prostate cancer awareness program at the 2016 California Senior Games. You’ll read in a moment why I’m in a bicycling outfit. I read all of the statistics about prostate cancer stages and survival statistics. I was surprised when I could only find 5 year survival statistics. Those statistics were good. 98% of prostate cancer survivors lived for 5 years after their treatment. But, I thought, what happens after those 5 years? How about statistics for 10 years? 15 years? And what could I do to prolong my survival because once my treatment was completed there wasn’t much guidance or interaction. I decided to read everything I could from those […] read more The 7 Deadly Emotions of Care Giving
The 7 Deadly Emotions of Care Giving Robert Warren Hess I’ve now gone through the process of losing four members of my family to cancer. My last experience was with my favorite aunt, who passed away from melanoma after a lengthy period of illness. My aunt lived in the Shenandoah valley of Virginia while I live in Los Angeles. So, the caregiving burden fell to my younger sister. This caregiving period lasted just over 3 years, and it was a highly emotional event for my sister, and we had many telephone conversations over that time. The excellent article below by Paula Spencer Scott talks about the emotions that inevitably come and some suggestions on how to deal with them. These are great insights and I hope they help you as much as they helped my sister and me. The 7 Deadly Emotions of Care Giving by Paula Spencer Scott Nobody would ever choose a smiley face as the perfect symbolic emoticon for a caregiver. Caregiving for an ailing loved one is just too stressful — often triggering damaging emotions that can not only undermine your good work but harm your health, as well. Here’s how to cope: Caregiver Emotion Trap #1: […] read more 4 ways to halve cancer death risk
4 ways to cut your cancer death risk by Robert Warren Hess A study published recently in the journal JAMA Oncology showed that simple lifestyle changes can reduce lung cancer and colorectal cancer in women by 85% and 60% respectively, and 90% and 50% for men. That’s a huge reduction. Some of the needed changes are pretty easy and others will take some dedication. Here’s what you need to do . . . Stop smoking – Hard, but not impossible. I went through the process 17 years ago. It seemed impossible at the time. Now I don’t even remember I ever smoked. Get down to a healthy weight. I went through this process, as well. I found that it was just a matter of having the right foods in the house and retraining my tastebuds, which, incidentally, completely renew themselves every 10-14 days. Most of us can do anything for 14 days. Drinking less alcohol – This may be easier than you think. A full 30% of Americans don’t drink at all, and 80% have less than one drink per day [Click here to see how you measure up] Changing these first three habits may seem impossible, but it’s really […] read more Prostate Cancer: To Treat or Not to Treat – That is the Question
More men with prostate cancer are choosing active surveillance - waiting to see if the tumor grows - instead of having immediate treatment. It's possible that trend will result in more prostate cancer deaths. read more Robert Warren Hess Honored at the 2016 Amgen Tour of California Breakaway From Cancer Walk
Manhattan Beach Resident Honored at the 2016 Amgen Tour of California Breakaway From Cancer Walk Posted: May 17, 2016 7:38 PM PDTUpdated: May 17, 2016 7:38 PM PDT May 17, 2016 – /PressAdvantage/ – Manhattan Beach, California – Robert Hess, Founder and President of the Manhattan Beach-based Prostate Cancer Awareness Project non-profit, participated in the Amgen Corporation’s Breakaway From Cancer Mile walk at the first Stage of the 2016 Amgen Tour of California in San Diego, California on Sunday, May 15, 2016. The Amgen Tour of California is America’s largest pro-cycling event and the Breakaway From Cancer program focuses on helping cancer survivors and educating people about preventing cancer. Robert Hess, a Manhattan Beach resident, one of 10 National Breakaway from Cancer Champions in 2015, was honored for his work in prostate cancer prevention and early detection. “I’m thrilled to be invited to participate again in the Breakaway from Cancer festivities,” said Hess. According to Hess, “There are 14 million cancer survivor living in the United States and another cancer survivor begins their survivorship journey every 19 seconds. We need to show people the lifestyle changes they can make to reduce the risk of cancer and we need to provide more support […] read more My Cycling Stats
One Simple Way to Keep Motivated to Exercise Cycling is my key cancer prevention exercise. Cycling and walking with my number one best friend, my wife. For some people, turning the cranks on a bicycle is just really fun; while for others, it’s pure boredom. I fall into the ‘fun’ category but I’m pretty competitive and I like to compete. I don’t, however, like to ride in big groups on the road so I use a tool called Strava.com to track my mileage and how well I do over routes I ride regularly. The really fun thing about Strava.com is that it lets you measure yourself against others in your gender and age group. I’m a numbers guy so I track pretty much everything. The widget below shows my week’s cycling mileage on Strava. This is a pretty busy week for me, so there aren’t many miles. Strava has free and paid plans. Give it a try, it may just help your motivation like it does mine. Allez-y! read more
How Active Surveillance for Prostate Cancer Can Fail
How Active Surveillance for Prostate Cancer Can Fail Since the introduction of the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test in the early 1990’s, the medical community has struggled with the issue of over treatment of prostate cancer. The PSA test detects many low-risk prostate cancers that do not immediate treatment. The treatment protocol for these cancer is called ‘active surveillance (AS).’ The introduction of AS alleviated a good deal of the over treatment but, as the article below shows, men and their doctors need to follow the treatment regimen. When there’s no treatment, it’s easy to forget and the cancer might just turn aggressive. If you are following an active surveillance program, we suggest that you personally track your PSA test with ProstateTracker. Once you create your ProstateTracker account, you will receive an email reminder every 12 months that it’s time for your next PSA test. This reminder serves as that proverbial ‘string around your finger.’ Read the full article below: Prostate Cancer: ‘Active’ Surveillance Is Often ‘Not’ by: Kate Johnson May 09, 2016 SAN DIEGO, California — Only 1 in 3 men with low-risk prostate cancer receive appropriate follow-up when assigned to active surveillance (AS) of their disease, a new study suggests. The findings […] read more Donate to PCAP
Simply click the Donate Now button below to visit our site at the Network for Good. . .
Follow PCAP
Follow Pony Express
RSS Newsletter
If you would like to stay updated with all of our latest news please enter your e-mail address here.