Patient’s partners share the caregiver's perspective of a prostate cancer diagnosis, describing the shock of receiving the news, the importance of staying calm and advocating for their loved one, and the value of seeking expert care. Their stories highlight how partners and family members play a vital role in supporting treatment decisions, navigating the healthcare system, and providing strength throughout the cancer journey.
Carmen Rabanal:
My name is Carmen. I'm from Spain and I'm married to a wonderful person. His name is Jim and our story began on October 8th, 2018 when my husband was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. It was a big shock, obviously, but my husband reacted very well. I think I was the one who took it harder. It took me a long time to accept it, but through time we have overcome that and we're dealing with it pretty well.
When my husband was diagnosed, we lived in Alabama and we were referred to Tulane to Dr. Sortar's office. And that was I think one of the highlights of our journey because we are very, very happy with the care we're getting. And we had the wonderful opportunity to meet our dear Dr. Barata.
Judy LaBella:
My name is Judy LaBella. I'm 71 years old. Been married to Joey for 52 years. And I think I was the first one to read his numbers for his prostate cancer. They came over the internet and I could tell it was pretty bad. The numbers went from five to past 125. And so called his doctor, got her on the phone, and then I had to go wake him up and say, "Hey, come on back in the office for a second.
Got something we need to talk about." And we did. And he sat right next to me and his primary care physician got on the phone and said, "Yeah, your numbers are not good. This is serious." And it was tough. It was a shock. First thing he said was, "Okay, we have to sell everything." I'm like, "No, no, we're not going to sell everything. We're going to take a deep breath. We're going to back up and we're going to handle this." And that's what we did.
And the best thing you can be to somebody in his position is a calm, sensible, "Let's take a step back approach." And that's what we did. That's what we did. And it was, it was really tough for him to tell his children that he had cancer because his reflection was always about what his dad went through, which was pancreatic cancer.
Baretta Lee:
When I met Ricky, he was already on a course of medications addressing issues with his prostate that he was addressing with his general practitioner and they weren't getting any better. The symptoms were getting worse. And so he was just telling me that he had problems urinating. He wasn't having problems with erections or sexual performance, but it was the urination. And so that was a big concern for him. We decided to go ahead and schedule a routine visit because it was coming around to his routine time to have an annual checkup. It was pretty healthy, but we decided to see another doctor at the time.
Once he told me that he had went to this doctor a couple of times and his PSA levels were rising and the only thing she was doing was giving medications and the symptoms were not getting better. And so I though, "Well, why don't we just go to another doctor, another general practitioner to just have a routine workup?" And it wasn't really anything detailed in the beginning because it was a routine visit.
However, it became very pertinent when the results of the PSA came back because he's healthy. He's generally healthy. So that was an alarm for the doctor, of course. And then it made it an alarm for us. So it was just coming back, getting those results, and she was like, "Hey, you got to go see somebody." Of course, you have to get somebody that takes the insurance.
And so we just prayed about it and just said, "Hey, let's..." And then around that time, it was COVID time. And so it was really hard to get in to find a doctor. It was taking forever to see somebody and so it actually was who took our insurance and the first appointment that we can get. And I was very diligent about it. I was calling around trying to get in and get in and finally we got a general practitioner that took him. We had options. She did refer us to other doctors, other treatments, but we did our research. I'm very nerdy when it comes to that kind of stuff. We did our research and when she said Dr. Klosen, of course, reviews and we heard nothing but good things about him. So of course it was like, we're right here in Augusta, right here at AU.
I'm familiar with the care that they give and so it was like, okay, we're going to put our trust in Dr. K. He did recommend a biopsy and so we immediately got in. It wasn't hard to get in. And we had the biopsy and I remember very clearly it was 12 snips of my life that I can never get back. It was very interesting to say the least, but it was very easy. He came in and after that it was like, okay, we go from here. We got a phone call telling us that the biopsy was positive for prostate cancer.
Staci Cornelius:
He went to see his local doctor last year in August for something totally unrelated to cancer and while there, the doctor suggested that it was time to do a repeat PSA because he hadn't had one in about nine or 10 years. And the PSA showed a very high level of 45, which alarmed my husband, not so much the local doctor, but he did refer him to a local urologist, both of whom had been friends of my husband and he repeated the PSA and it was essentially the same.
So a biopsy was recommended and the biopsy unfortunately showed cancer. The biopsy report was devastating for us because of the number of cores that were positive and some other findings. So we had multiple appointments both with the original urologist and then found a urologist at UAB, University of Alabama Birmingham, an academic medical center and that's where the biopsy was performed.
So the biopsy was done at UAB and I went with him. He knew I think right away that it was cancer because the urologist there said that he could see a very large tumor. I think he called it a big Mama Jama tumor and he thought it was outside of the prostate capsule. We were... or at least I was surprised by the diagnosis. I had gone into it thinking that that elevated PSA could be related to something else. I think we probably should have known at that point that with a PSA that high, he was going to be diagnosed with prostate cancer and of course the biopsy showed that that was the case.
There were some features that were identified in the biopsy. I don't really remember what the terminology is, but we knew from those features that this was going to be serious because of the extent of the cancer that was found in his prostate and that the urologist during the biopsy could see that it was extended beyond the capsule. So at that point, I don't even think we knew what the staging was, but we knew it was going to be a high risk type of cancer. And that's when Henry decided that we were absolutely going to seek out an opinion at a center of excellence.
And MD Anderson being a quick direct plane right away from Birmingham, that's where we went first. We had friends who had been there for other types of cancer treatment. They showed us the ropes, where to stay, what to do and we got there...