Moving Abroad Challenges: July 11 Quick Update

This post is going to be a quick one. This is Bob. I wanted to share a quick update with what’s going on and where we are in this process as things have recently changed and we’re rapidly approaching another crucial deadline. Here is the latest information on our steps towards a new adventure abroad.

If you’ve kept up with our recent posts on the chaotic twists and turns and how they’ve continued to change, you’ll know at this point that our plans in June to head out to Puerto Vallarta changed for medical reasons. Tiffany is flying out to start her cruise ship nursing job on July 12th with Princess Cruise Lines. No new changes there at this point. This update is more about recent changes for me.

As noted in the chaotic twists and turns update, I was waiting for biopsy results to come back before making any concrete plans. The results are back now and I felt it was appropriate to update everyone with the details. I may give you more info than you want at this point, so if you want to back out this is the place to abandon ship. This procedure was a prostate biopsy for an indeterminate lesion that showed on MRI. The biopsy returned 12/12 samples having adenocarcinoma with a Gleason score of 6. I don’t want to get too deep in the weeds, so here is a link for you to learn more about prostate cancer.

At this time I had a follow up appointment with my surgeon today. He laid out my treatment options and left the ball in my court. Given this is a low grade, slow growing tumor, my treatment options leave me with some flexibility in timing and keep some of my adventure options open. In a nutshell the options are:

• Active Surveillance -> Which essentially means keep an eye on it with regular, routine labs and biopsies. The downside to this approach is the ever present stress factor, which I will inevitably brood about.
• Radiation Therapy -> I’m still not going to get into the details here. While radiation therapy has a high success rate it also comes with a lot of side effects. The biggest issue with radiation therapy is that if it fails, it usually also eliminates surgery as an option.
• Surgical Removal -> Again, no graphic rabbit hole to take you down. Surgical therapy also has a high success rate, but it too has significant potential side effects and complications. 

Given the slow growing nature of this type of cancer there is time to make a decision. My surgeon offered to set me up with a referral to radiation oncology for another perspective. I decided to take that offer and am now waiting again to hear back from them to schedule another consult.

At this point Tiffany is kicking off her adventure and given the nature of my situation I’ve decided to fly out for Mexico in double quick time. Like I said at the start, I just wanted to share a quick update to let everyone know what was going on at the moment. Spoon feeding info into this situation is driving me a little batty. Time to head out and get this show on the road. I’ll post an update really soon with the latest details. Cheers people! Keep smiling and wearing silly hats!