Should Cancer Be My Top Priority?

November 4, 2024
Ron Cooper
Ron Cooper

Ron Cooper writes about the funny and serious sides of cancer. He is the author of “A Grateful Survivor” (Amazon) and blogs at RonCooperAuthor.com. Come along for the ride on his cancer journey!

I once thought that prostate cancer should be the center of my universe, but with everything else going on, now I’m not so sure.

Dear reader, I need your help. As a patient with prostate cancer, I’m trying to prioritize my time and energy, and it has not been easy. There’s just a whole lot going on, and I need some guidance, please. Look at the multiple-choice questionnaire below and tell me which should be my top priority:

A. My wife’s auto accident

B. My son’s hospitalization

C. My cancer biopsy 

D. Our move to a new apartment

E. All of the above

Before selecting one, here’s a little bit of context for you. My prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test results have been on the rise for more than a year, and my doctors suspect that it may be metastatic. Thus, the order for a biopsy procedure.

The order was placed around the same time my wife and I were moving into a new apartment, an exhausting endeavor that claimed most of our waking hours.

Also, our car was rear-ended and totaled, with my wife behind the wheel. Fortunately, she was not hurt, but we had to rely upon a car rental for two weeks and arrange for a U-Haul truck to move our things to the new place. It was a month-long ordeal.

The same day as my wife’s accident, my son fell, cracking several ribs and experiencing a slight puncture to one of his lungs. He was hospitalized overnight and spent more than a week at home recuperating before returning to work. I tried to cheer him up during his convalescence.

In a word, life has been topsy-turvy lately, with plenty of sleepless nights mulling over my upcoming biopsy, and daytimes consumed with check-ins with my son, moving and trying to find a replacement car.

So, dear reader, did you select “C” for my cancer biopsy as the top priority? Metastatic cancer is a huge deal, a life-and-death issue, a quality-of-life issue, a treatment issue. So, “C” would not have been necessarily the wrong choice. Initially, it was my first choice.

But what I have learned from this very busy period in my life is that my cancer is not the center of the universe. People have accidents, get hospitalized and face a whole host of other very human ordeals. 

I am a patient with cancer, but I’m also a husband and father, among other roles. Many other lives intersect with mine, and I strive to be a caring, attentive family man.

It would be so easy for me to obsess about my health, especially when the stakes are so high. But I choose to make my life full of dedication and passion toward those who enrich and fulfill me while trying to keep one step ahead of cancer’s onslaught.

That’s why I chose “E” for “All of the above.”

For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.