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I am Marlys Johnson and here are the emotions I went through when I learned that my husband
was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
For me, the emotions were fear and anxiety and I am not an anxious or fearful person
by nature, but of course you think about all the ramifications of your loved one going
through pain and suffering, of your finances, of living life alone as a widow and I would
say as time progressed, every time I would get a piece of news we didn't want to hear,
that fear that anxiety did not take over so much and now it's you live so long with the
"C" word. It's, you know, we go to an appointment together, we hear maybe news that we don't
want to hear. We walked out and between, you know, the park where we were parked or get
into the car. We talked there for 2 minutes and then we decided to celebrate, go out,
dinner out and go get a chai tea or something. As time passes and as you live with that fear
and as you are part of that, a cancer community, any bit of news that is on the negative side,
you are just able to manage that better and better.
Some prostate cancers are high risk, aggressive, and more likely to spread. Others are low
risk, least likely to have bad outcomes. The biopsy says cancer, but current diagnostic
tools provide limited information about how aggressive a man's individual disease is,
so most men decide to treat prostrate cancer immediately. Once treated, many men experience
serious long-term side effects like incontinence and *** impotence. Immediate treatment
is not always needed, but right now a man can't be sure if his cancer is the kind that
is likely to require treatment or if he is okay to wait for now. What if there was a
test that could determine how aggressive prostate cancer is. Genomic health is developing a
new test to do just that. By reviewing the underlying biology of the tumor and using
genes from multiple biologic pathways, the test can predict the aggressiveness of prostate
cancer when diagnosed, allowing a man to make a more informed treatment decision with confidence,
taking care of himself with more information and greater peace of mind.