My semi-annual visit to the Cancer Clinic...

My radiation oncologist, a delightful lady who also is a part-time professor at our University of B.C., says my PSA reading is only 0.21 and she feels that it's safe to call me "cured". I said, "My Dear, this all seems like magic to me. Who would think that in 45 minutes on the table, a thing like this can be cured?" And she replied, "I tend to think of it as 'magic' myself... it really seems that way even for me."

So she said I should continue the tests every six months, and send her the reports, but that she doesn't need to see me again for two years. So she really does consider me cured, and I think that's just wonderful. I asked her, "How does a guy like me say 'thank you' to you for saving my life? I've never been able to find the right words for that, because there aren't any to fully express it." She said, "I'm just as happy as you are that it turned out this way for you." 

Added later:-
Perhaps I should explain that remark about "45minutes on the table..." -
I had prostate cancer, and the procedure I received was a prostate brachytherapy. This involves first of all mapping the prostate with ultrasound to locate the cancerous areas, and then plot those on a 3D grid. The grid has alphabetical letters along one side, and numbers along the other, and then the
bad spots are also plotted by how far in they are from a zero-reference point.
This is done to pinpoint each cancerous spot in such a way that it is accurately located within the prostate and pictured so that it can be reached later by a needle.

When the mapping is completed, an order is placed with a special lab in the U.S. which supplies the radioactive pellets, along with biodegradable filler sections, as cores for the injection needles. When inserted via these hollow needles into the prostate, these radioactive pellets will be located in each cancerous spot, so that their radioactivity will be able to kill the cancer cells from within. Together, all of them form a small cloud of radioactivity that reaches just beyond the confines of the prostate gland, and therefore doesn't irritate nearby organs as
would be the case with external radiation. 

It takes about six weeks to receive the set of pellets in their cores custom-made for your procedure. The procedure itself only takes about 45 minutes in what's known as a day surgery. There's another hour or so of coming out of the anesthetic, and then you can get up, get dressed, and you're finished. When I
looked at the spot where the needles went in, I couldn't see much of anything.
No bandage, no wounds, just a light tint of disinfectant. I didn't feel particularly sore, and I could walk around OK.

The pellets are only mildly radioactive, with a half-life of around 90 days, so you aren't radioactive very long, and you don't glow in the dark. But you do get a card warning of your radioactivity, in case you need certain other treatments during the following two years. I've kept mine, because it's nice to be able to show that you were once radioactive, and lived to tell about it.

And the big advantage of this procedure is that you avoid those daily trips into the Cancer Clinic for those external radiation treatments that go on for about six weeks, and are a damned nuisance, and probably not as effective as this is, because this is working for you 24/7 until the job's done.

An internal medicine and cardiac specialist I've been seeing for other problems asked me how I felt about that prostate brachytherapy I received in April of 2010. I replied that I could do a commercial for it, and I think it's absolutely the best treatment for prostate cancer that exists today. It's a one-time treatment, very effective, and almost painless. There's some discomfort during the first few weeks, because of urination difficulties, due to the drain from the bladder going right through the center of the prostate, but usually that disappears after several weeks, and you're back to more or less normal.  I say "more or less" because there's some things that will now be premanently different, such as your love life. But regardless of that, this certainly beats the alternatives, and I'd do it again without  even thinking about it, if that were ever necessary. And
that's highly unlikely. As my doctor said, "We've now got to find you something else to go out from, because it won't be prostate cancer."