When I became an attending oncologist I had no training in how to break bad news. It was a confrontation with a patient whose chronic myeloid leukemia and turned blastic that made me realize I was afraid to die. This was the trigger for my conversion. Until I had sorted out my own view of death I had nothing to say to my patients.

When my own PSA came back high a few years back my Christian faith came under test. As I waited for the results of my prostatic biopsy I wondered whether it would sustain me. I found that I was able face the possibility of death as one might approach a great adventure. If that were to be my way then, although the details were obscure, I knew that I would in the end “be like Him”; if I were to be spared, then there was work enough for me here on earth.

My continued presence to write this reveals that it was all a false alarm; benign prostatic hypertrophy was the diagnosis.

My brother-in-law was just diagnosed at the age of 60. We spoke at Christmas about peripheral health issues. I said that I had my baseline PSA done 2 years ago. He did not know what it was. I explained as best I could and recommended he get it done with a physical. He did and this is what came back. Maybe, just maybe, I helped prolong his life. It is in the early stages and very treatable according to the sister-in-law.

All men over the age of 50 need to have this done. No sense dying young for no good reason.

Now we are told that he is being let go from the practice, and the reasons we were given are that he “doesn’t bring enough people into the practice and he spends too much time with his patients.”

We are horrified at this; it is a terrible waste of a wonderful doctor. What do you recommend we do? I suggested that my husband and the 2 other men he knows who have been to the same doctor recently, should write a letter in support of him to the university system his practice is in. Can we do more?