John shares how learning he had a Gleason 9 prostate cancer forced him to quickly confront the seriousness of his diagnosis and make difficult treatment decisions. He reflects on enduring hormone therapy and an intensive course of radiation while continuing to work full time, relying on determination and resilience to get through treatment.
John Burke:
That I was a Gleason score nine. I still dismissed the virility of the nine. I said, "Well, the scale must go to thousands." They assured me it only went to 10, and the 10 would possibly result in loss of life. It wasn't until that point in time that I understood that the severity of where I was at. This was just no longer a, "Hey, let's get it done." It's not like my hand was hurting and I get a procedure to fix it. Maybe it hurts, maybe it doesn't.
And so they assured me if I followed through with that CyberKnife procedure, it would end in a shortened life. That I had really no choice to live a higher quality life, or a life at all, if I didn't submit to the procedure that they outlined. And it was for the first time that they used the term that my case was they had done the numbers. And the data didn't support any of these other procedures that I had gone through, or considered until I sat right in the chair right there.
So I just had to, in a really quick decision, I had to decide if my marriage would survive that. If I could survive mentally without breaking down what the side effects of the upcoming procedure was going to be. And I had to tell myself that you can do that. You can do that. And I was in there 11 days later to start the procedure outlined by the Dana-Farber hormonal replacement therapy.
And 60 days later, full on radiation, high grade radiation for 42 days straight. Once the while working every day. I would go to work, work all day. Drive to Dana-Farber, submit to the radiation procedure. Go home go to the gym and do it all again the next day for what seemed like forever. And I just remember sometimes doing it that you leave the cold, cold New England winters and you'd be in a dank parking lot, six stories underneath the ground, water pouring in. And just say, "How much more can I take?" And just like now, I'd choke it back and I'd be a new guy by the time I got to the top. And just do it all again the next day.