Scars from The Cancer Grenade

My Robotic Surgery
I made the accompanying USA Today style illustration to show the location of my scars without grossing anyone out, and to tell the story of how I decided to let a surgeon and his robot use tiny little surgical tools inside of my body.

In the fall of 2008 I went to my new primary care doctor for a physical. My PSA levels were high so we ran a round of antibiotics to see if it was an infection of some sort. After two weeks we re-tested and the levels were just as high so I went to see a urologist, who suggested that everything pointed toward the need for a biopsy. I opted to wait until after the holidays.

On January 27th of 2009 I went into the hospital for a surgical biopsy. Three days later the doctor was on the phone telling me that I had prostate cancer. Somehow I knew that I was going to get that call, but it still shocked me to my core. On the way home that night I called an old friend to tell him the news, still trying to make sense of it myself. Later, I wrote a letter to a friend living out of state as I didn’t want to Continue reading Scars from The Cancer Grenade

23andMe

23andMe

I recently treated myself to something I’d been wanting to do for nearly 2 years… I had my family’s DNA genotyped by the company 23andMe. Here are 10 things about me and my folks that we didn’t even know (and this is just scratching the surface of data about ourselves that we can explore):

10 — My Mom’s mother’s mother’s mothers sprang from the same haplogroup as THE Marie Antoinette (though that does not mean that I am necessarily a direct descendant).

9 — My Dad’s mother’s mother’s mothers came from a region stretching between Spain to North Africa, all the way around to Lebanon. No wonder I like drinking Port and eating Baba Ganouj.

8 — My DNA says that I have a 24% lifetime incidence of experiencing Prostate Cancer, as compared to other people in my same genotype. This is fairly ironic, as I am currently Continue reading 23andMe