It had all begun with a sensation of pain in the area in which I later found out the prostate gland is located in late October of 2005. Compared to pains I have endured since, it was minute, miniscule, barely worthy of being mentioned. Still, up to this time, I was not used to feeling any pain at all, so it quickly commanded my attention. Prostate cancer is supposed to be asymptomatic. But, nobody had ever told my prostate gland that.

The uncomfortable sensation would come and go, allowing me to periodically dismiss it as just my imagination or possibly a hernia or a slight muscle pull. Eventually, “the pain.” was beginning to keep me up at night. I could no longer dismiss it. So I called a close friend who sternly admonished me with what I thought was surprising harshness.

“Glenn, go to the doctor,” she counseled firmly...But, I still didn't go.

Finally, I was having a perfectly wonderful time one bright December afternoon when I suddenly noticed that I had made three trips to the men's room of a public building only to find that I couldn't go. I became panic stricken and immediately drove myself to the nearest emergency room. During a three hour wait for treatment there at first my inability to urinate continued. Then what had been a blockage unexplainably became an unstoppable continuous torrent.

Suddenly, it felt like I was in serious trouble without any means of escape. What was even more worrisome to me was that now I had become immersed in the WNY medical system. Because I had shared my problem with ER doctors and nurses, appointments had been made for me for tests and such. Soon I would be told what was really wrong with me, something I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

My problems with urinary performance soon went away, never to return. Still, after a visual examination by a doctor a week later I was told that the left side of my prostate gland looked “suspicious.” to him.

“What could I do about it if I do have prostate cancer,” I asked, trying to hide my fear.

“Oh,” she declared cheerfully, “at that point, you would have a world of alternatives.”

“A world of alternatives?”...He made it sound like going to a buffet!

Before long I was directed to a prostate biopsy, a truly painful encounter which involved sitting on a table half naked while an intern, directed by an MD, lopped off 16 pieces of my prostate gland for examination, definitely not a walk in the park for anyone. The final diagnosis of prostate cancer came in a phone conversation on Jan. 3, 2006.

At that point I was directed to the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, one of the most well regarded cancer treatment centers around, or so the commercials said, where it was strongly suggested that I immediately begin what was referred to as “light radiation treatments.” on my prostate.

“You need to make a decision fairly quickly,” I was told.

If all of this had happened in 2012 instead of 2006, improved medical practice would have meant that the recommendation would have been to do nothing right away to deal with the mild symptoms and relatively benign test results I was being faced with at that time, a strategy known as “watchful waiting.” If I had insisted on getting a second opinion, even back in those days, this still would probably have been the course of action I chose.

Instead, motivated by a completely unwarranted sense of panic, I allowed myself to be rushed into “treatment,” fearing that the alternative was imminent death.

As for “the pain,” this became a story all unto itself. It would stay with me on and off, sometimes reaching excruciating levels of severity for years at a time. It wasn't until April of 2010 when I found out that it could have been easily eliminated by taking small doses of a prescription drug called casodex. Not a pain killer or narcotic, casodex lowers testosterone levels in the blood, thus minimizing prostate inflammation.

Why didn't my doctors prescribe it for me when “the pain” first surfaced?

When I asked my second Roswell physician why my first doctor hadn't done so, he smiled sheepishly and replied, “I guess he just didn't think of it!”

Since I had never been diagnosed with a serious illness before, I had no idea how to handle such a crisis, so I handled it poorly as did my doctors. If I had had the same doctor then that I have now, I'm pretty sure I would have been directed to a more thoughtful set of alternatives, leading to much better results.

Not insisting on a second opinion at that time was the FIRST BIG MISTAKE I made during my six year battle with prostate cancer, one that I would regret many times in the years ahead. Even more ominously, there would be many more missteps and more misjudgments to be made in the 77 months between then and now, made both myself and the highly touted staff of Roswell Park “cancer experts” on whom I so desperately wanted to rely.