Making Light:  Open thread 118 ::: January 18, 2009, 08:03 AM

Greetings, friends, from the other side of the slough.  At least it
looks like I'm on my way out of it.  The past three months have been
very gray and dim, probably from a couple of friends' funerals, a
couple of hospitalizations, the roosting of procrastinated stress,
disrupted meds, and a cancer diagnosis.

Things started brightening up about a week before the prostatectomy
that I had scheduled in August, on the way down.  It was about the
latest I could get started and actually make it happen.  As it turned
out, things went really smoothly.  Now twelve days post-op, I have
every reason to expect a complete recovery.

I hope it's not just gratuitous name-dropping to mention that I
got knifed by Dr. Patrick C. Walsh, the man who revolutionized
prostatectomy technique in the 1980s.  Before him, the prognosis
was 100% impotence, nearly 100% incontinence, and 0% effectiveness
against cancer (the last due to late cancer detection and postponement
of prostatectomy due to the side-effects).  Dr. Walsh's surgical
innovations and the use of PSA screening have turned the numbers
around.

Prostate cancer is second only to lung cancer in incidence and
fatality to men, and smoking is the only reason lung cancer has the
edge.  So quit smoking and get your PSA tested, guys.  (Women, quit
smoking and get a mammogram.)  There's enough death around without
jumping into the volcano.