In Sept 2013, I had anterior surgery fusion of 2 discs in my lower spinal column. The day before surgery, my surgeon went over the procedure for myself and my spouse to inform me of what they were going to do. This included having to use bone bank material ground up to pack out the area where the discs had been removed within a wire mesh cage. The next day the surgery took place on a Friday morning and the surgeon also informed us that that was his last day on the job and would retire the following week. After this initial surgery, later on I developed more painful spinal stenosis symptoms and disc deteriorations involving pain management shots & physical therapy sessions again. Well after another three years of these treatments, I finally sought out another surgeon in 2016, who turned me down and sent me back to physical therapy for another 6-7 months. I finally got him to consent to open back surgery in 2017 but he all of a sudden had a hand injury and got cancelled. Then I finally had the posterior fusion of 3-4 vertebrae involving 8 screws and two titanium rods in Oct 2017.

In March of this year 2018 I had an ER visit on a Sunday for what I thought was stomach disorder and blah feelings over a 2 week period. A follow-up visit with my primary doctor just suggested using Nexium for possible ulcer. Don't know what happened to me, but I all of a sudden threw my hands up and said just give a a full physical. The doctor called me with shocking news, Ken you have a PSA of 422. Another test 3 days later went to 470. He was shocked beyond belief that in Nov 2016, my PSA was 1.91. Now 14 months later it was 422. My biopsy later stated cancer of the prostate at a 9/10 Gleason score. Biggest shocker came later after reviewing my online records revealed that in the Sept 2013 surgery, a lab produced substance called rchbmp-2 was also inserted into the spinal fusion cage along with the human cadaver bone. Well the compound rchbmp-2 was later on found to cause prostate cancer and breast cancer in women when used. Cancer rate was 2.5 times more likely to develop with its usage but I had two separate insertions of the material to up it to 5 times more likely.In just 14 months I went from 0-200 mph to Stage #4 cancer that had spread to the bones and lymph nodes now. Only good news is that PSA dropped to 39 after one chemo and hormone shot and is now at 6.88 after 2 chemo treatments. They now speculate that the cancer may have started in the spine and spread to the prostate gland because my records are under review for some reason.

Update so far is that 2 months ago my PSA dropped to 0.4 from the high of 472 when diagnosed in Mar 2018.. Very 1st chemo treatment back then dropped my PSA from 472 to 39. From then on it dropped dramatically and continued to my current PSA of 0.4. Major event through all of this is that I didn't catch it in time before it metastasized into my bones. Also in addition, I am also voluntarily consuming pomegranate juice which has several studies online verifying its cancer killing properties and lowering of PSA scores in some cases.

Currently I have a recorded PSA of 0.1 now as of my last visit using ZYTIGA 2000 mgs daily. Now They have gone to a drug called YANSA which has the same ingredients Abiraterone Acetate, but has been micro engineered to very small micro-particles, which absorbs more quickly and thoroughly dissolves into the blood stream. Well coming up in Dec, will be my full transfer over to YANSA which by the way is (4) 250 mgs pills taken all at once daily, with only 1000mgs of the Abiraterone Acetate vs previous 2000 mgs of Zytiga. Will hope the new drug works at lower dose with better absorption of the entire drug. At 0.1 PSA now and if I go any lower, I' ll be technically cured, if no cancer cells are present. I am killing cancer cells by starving the tumors testosterone source, along with the castration I had last December to cut off remaining testosterone from the adrenal glands.

Kenneth's e-mail address is: domino54 AT att.net (replace "AT" with "@")