David Ciracovitch was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1944. He and his second wife Chris live in suburban Adelaide.

David and his two business partners moved their venture capital start up to Melbourne, Victoria in 1996.

He experienced chest pains driving home from work one night in 1999 and this caused him to have a full medical. There were no heart issues ( stress?), but a prostate problem was found during a DRE. A subsequent blood test showed a PSA of 6.9.

David had to this age ( 55) led an active life of sailing, cycling etc and had enjoyed almost perfect health.

David's father died at the age of 74 of prostate cancer/bone cancer (no treatment!) and this caused David's urologist to recommend an immediate radical prostatectomy, which was performed in September 1999.

David continued to work in Melbourne, but the usual complications following surgery led him to retire in 2000 and return to Adelaide.

With a married daughter in Florida, David and Chris were lucky to have done a number of trips to the States and elsewhere.

David feels he has had a very fortunate life.

Problems with a married son based in Melbourne caused David and Chris to sell their Adelaide home in 2008, and return to Melbourne to help their son and his family and child mind two young children.

The week David moved back to Melbourne in 2008, his 39 y.o. son was killed in a motorcycle accident and David and Chris briefly returned to Adelaide for Nikolas' funeral.

They had a very happy life in Melbourne from then on, with a good deal of travel, boating etc.

PSA had however risen from near zero after the 1999 operation, to 8.9 by 2010, and to 46 in 2016, when quarterly Zolardex (hormone) injections were started - and continue to the present time. Hormone treatment reduced PSA to 1,9 by August 2017, but by May 2019, psa hadrisen again to 7.5, and chemo - Doxetaxel - was started in January 2020.

Notwithstanding that psa had dropped to 4.2 by January 2021, Zytiga (aberaterone acetate) was started.

By 2018, David and his wife had returned to Adelaide.

By October 2021, psa had risen to 9.0 and a course of radiotherapy was undergone.

Ironically, in 2023, David's oncologist arranged for a DNA test to be done to see if David's cancer was in fact hereditary, but it proved not to be! Looking back, one has to question the haste in which David's prostatectomy was done in 1999, as it is now clear that there was no hereditary link.

Had the DNA test done in 2023 showed a hereditary link, David would have qualified for a state of the art drug.

Psa continued to rise and more chemo was started in mid-2023 - Cabaritaxel. However David chose to have only 3 doses of this drug due to significant side effects.

His Adelaide oncologist has suggested Lutetium 177 - an injectible radioactivedrug, but David has decided not to go down that path. He turns 80 next year and has been fighting cancer and side effects now for over 20 years.Lutetium 177 is not on Medicare or the PBS in Australia and is expensive, with a success rate of only 1 in 3 patients and even then with no garantee as to how much extra life might be gained.

Incidentally, he believes he couldn't have coped if it wasnt for Dribble-Stop - a Canadian designed external plastic clamp, which David has used very successfully for many years.

I November 2023, David's oncologist arranged for a biopsy to be done on the tumour, to more clearly identify the type of cancer in the tumour, but David subsequently decided against this procedure.

He has decided to have no further treatment - although ADT is continuing. His tumour, which is in the bladder wall with some metasteces in the spine, continues to grow and his psa, which was 120 as ay October 2023 had risen to 207 as at November 2023.

David has no symptoms, other than tiredness, breathlessness, some minor bleeding and discomfort sitting for long periods. He has little pain at this stage and even then only erratically.

He had a heart stent fitted in 2021 due to an 80% blocked artery. He has had no other health issues.

David remains happily married - now almost 45 years -with Chris enjoying an active life and excellent health, for which they are both very thankful.

David's e-mail address is: dciracov AT bigpond.net.au (replace "AT" with "@")