How faith swayed my prostate cancer treatment decision

This is an opinion column.

I handed the sheet of paper to my wife. It was filled with words, necessary and important words.

I couldn’t see them, though — or, couldn’t see them.

“Brief Summary of Options for Treating Prostate Cancer,” it read across the top.

Options.

I tried. I scanned the page. Until it was clear I wasn’t seeing anything. Not a single word.

Anyone who’s heard the “C-word” and their name in the same sentence will confirm this: You go deaf. You hear the next few words, but you don’t hear them. Because cancer reverberates in your brain like a gong until, well, it fades. However long that takes.

It took weeks after hearing in early July that cancer was discovered in my prostate for me to begin fully hearing again, to begin thinking again without my brain interrupting: “You have cancer.”

It blinds you, too. I learned that while sitting in my urologist’s waiting room before our first conversation about my options. My treatment options.

Options are a blessing and a burden — especially when life rests with the choices. Your life.

It took me a minute to embrace the blessing of having options, of having discovered cancer early enough — Stage 2, I was told — to be handed a sheet of paper listing seven ways to combat the disease. Of having benefitted from years of regular checkups and PSA tests. In May, I learned my latest test had spiked.

“It’s a blessing, you know,” my primary physician shared. “Now, you know the fight. And you can’t fight an enemy you can’t see.”

Still, I couldn’t yet see the options. My wife took the sheet, pulled out a pen and began reading. Within moments, she scratched out the first option: Active Surveillance. “…a course of no active treatment…” was about as far as she got.

“Oh, hell naw,” we both might have said simultaneously.

In the urologist’s office, we listened politely as he explained the option. My cancer, he said, was “slow-moving” (whatever that meant) and that I’d get another PSA test in six or so months and if my levels had risen, I could get another biopsy and….blah, blah, blah. That last part is pretty much all I heard.

“Get this thing out of me,” was my resounding thought. Wife’s, too. So, we moved on.

Of the remaining options, the urologist further explained robotic surgery and radiation. We asked lots of questions — as did my daughter, who was in the room via FaceTime from Los Angeles, where she lives. (My son was travelling and unable to join.) We heard all the pros and cons. We asked more questions. For well over an hour.

As we were wrapping up, my urologist, with whom we’d shared our Christian faith, asked: “Do you mind if I pray with you?”

We prayed. Right there in his office. A few minutes later in the waiting room, we prayed again with an elder from our church who had come for support.

One week later, I publicly shared my diagnosis and declared having the faith to beat it.

I was not completely surprised. My father died in January 1969; I was 11 years old. Prostate cancer is the second-leading cause of death among U.S. men. One in every six Black men will be diagnosed with it in our lifetimes, and we’re 2.1 times more likely to die from it than white men, according to Zero Prostate Cancer. Men with a father, son or brother diagnosed with prostate cancer are up to three times more likely to develop the disease.

Men like me.

Read my Conquering Cancer Chronicles columns here.

Throughout those early weeks after learning of my diagnosis, I gripped tightly onto my faith, which has been a lifelong journey. In my youth, our family belonged to historic Vernon A.M.E. Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the only structure that survived the 1921 Race Massacre.

Those seeds have been growing — in fits and starts, I confess. They’ve found fertile soil in Birmingham, where I’ve been blessed to be embraced by strong Christian communities, leaders and teachers.

It never crossed my mind to dive into the deep end with Dr. Google and research all I could about prostate cancer. Instead, I dived deeper into just one book.

And yet…

“I’ve decided to have surgery to remove my prostate — and cancer,” I wrote in that initial column. “Boot the alien out.”

No matter your faith, whether you’re a believer or not, you’ve likely heard this: If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

I told everybody my plans and now, I don’t exactly recall when I began to hear: Pause.

I quickly embraced living in expectation of beating prostate cancer, of eventually booting out this unwelcome visitor. One of the first scriptures that struck me was 2 Corinthians 12:9 — “… my power is made perfect in weakness…”

Yet I just as quickly pursued my plan. And even neglected one of my “go-to” scriptures, one I wear on a silver chain around my neck: Isaiah 40: 31 — “… those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength…,” reads one version.

Reads another: “…those who wait….”

Of course, I sought other medical opinions. After reviewing the results of my biopsy, a urologist said, “If you were my patient, I’d recommend active surveillance.”

Yeah, our hell naw option.

Another urologist, a longtime friend and prostate cancer survivor (he opted for surgery), added that active surveillance was “a viable option” for me.

That’s when I began to seriously ponder it.

I informed my primary urologist that I was leaning toward active surveillance. “At some point,” he said, “you’re probably going to need treatment. But I do think it’s safe to watch for now.” For more comfort, he sent samples from my biopsy for a Decipher test, which gauges through genetics the level of risk of the cancer metastasizing within five years.

I waited.

In early August, I attended the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, of which I’ve been a member for 40 years. I rarely walked a few steps without a fellow member stopping me and sharing their prostate cancer journey. Many had conquered it through surgery, some through radiation. I listened and thanked them all.

I shared with a few that I was considering active surveillance. Only one recommended against it. “It could break away and spread,” he said.

I knew. Pros and cons.

Soon after returning, the Decipher results arrived. “Your risk was in the low category, right at the border between low and intermediate,” the urologist said. “So, that’s good.

“I’m more comfortable with you watching it based on this score than I would have been if it was high-risk,” he added. “You still have what we call unfavorable intermediate risk prostate cancer. But fortunately, the genetic risk score is on the low side.”

Active surveillance. Active waiting. Oxymoronic, isn’t it? Do something while doing nothing.

We haven’t revealed our plan to many. A few folks ask, “How’s your treatment going?”

“Great,” I respond. And that’s true.

Active surveillance will activate your spirituality. Level up your faith.

Those who wait…

So, that’s the plan. For now.

That’s the plan because my hearing is finally better. Because I’ve heard: Be still… from both Psalm 46: 10 and Mark 4: 39. In the latter, Jesus “rebuked” the storm, and it went “completely still.”

I’m under no delusions. I do not know what will transpire in my body between now and my next PSA blood test. Yet I am at peace with the plan — with God and science.

I am trusting that whatever transpires, His perfect power will manifest.

In my weakness.