The Hardest Part

The great American Philosopher Thomas Earl Petty said it best:

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

Tom has expressed my current situation most concisely and most perfectly.  I have less than 24 hours to wait before my Urologist shares with me the results of a more sophisticated PSA test.  It will most likely reveal whether I have Prostate Cancer.  That "one more card" will go a long way to inform what will happen in 2023.

Not that I'm all that spun up about it:  a previous missive in this space expressed my disdain for tippy-toeing around the word "cancer" since if I indeed have cancer, I already have it and saying the word won't make any practical difference.  And once I learn (if I learn, and there's a greater than zero chance that I don't have cancer), it then creates new decision trees that allow me to perceive I'm being proactive.  

My guess is that my Urologist wants an MRI bad, and might be willing to engage me in a Scavenger Hunt.  I sent a note to the lead researcher on the MagnaSafe study (see "Ho Ho Flippin Ho" for the gory details on MagnaSafe).  He's a cardiologist in LaJolla.  Nice gig.  Anyway, I gave him the Cliff's Notes version of my situation and asked him for guidance on 3Tesla imaging with mixed cardiac devices.  

Amazingly, he responded.  And gave me solid information about what to do next.  Told me that my perception that the MagnaSafe study doesn't cover 3Tesla was correct, but they're working on something that might be published in a year or two.  Pointed me towards Johns Hopkins and U Penn, two teaching institutions that were working on 3Tesla stuff.

If indeed Dr. Urology wants to go down that Rabbit Hole, it may be off to Baltimore and/or Philadelphia.  Or, we may revert to the old 1.5Tesla imaging I got in 2020 that showed my 147cc prostate (where 25 is normal and 40 is Large).  Better than nothing.  

So, I wait.  I've been waiting since late November, when the first blood test showed a skyrocketing PSA of 8.98 (and I'm medicated with Finasteride, which means you DOUBLE that PSA).  

But all is not lost.  I've got Tom to help me cope.  And it'll all be over soon enough.  Then we have MORE fun...