A Strange Place

[Guest guest]

One of the things

that has kept me away from posting lately is the re-writing and updating of my

booklet A Strange Place.

I thought some of you might be interested in the genesis of this little

project.

About 10 years ago a young lady posted to a forum like this one asking where

she could find downloadable information for her parents, as her father had been

diagnosed with prostate cancer. At that time the resources on the Web were not

as developed as they are now and we realized that there was no site that

provided a succinct and simple overview of the disease and treatment options.

So a bunch of us decided to write one between us.

As matters developed, a great prostate cancer activist – Donna Pogliano

– took over the project, with a number of us, including Young

providing input. In due course Donna produced her online piece – A Primer

on Prostate Cancer, still at http://www.phoenix5.org/Basics/DPprimer0918.html

.. During the time she was writing this, she had a good deal of contact with Dr

Strum, a well known oncologist, and between them they decided to expand

the basic article into a full blown book - A Primer on Prostate Cancer. The

Empowered Patients Guide. (ISBN number 0-9658777-6-0) which Steve J has

endorsed many times and which I think is the best technical book I have read on

the subject.

Although, as I say I think this is one of the best books available for men who

want a good understanding of the disease, my personal view was that both the

book and the Web piece were still a little more technical than I had envisaged

for newly diagnosed men, so I decided to go ahead with my own project. I

didn’t want to distract any attention from Donna’s excellent work,

so I focused on informing South African men, as I was living there at the time.

I put my booklet up on the YANA site and

called it A Strange Place

because as Young said so well a prostate cancer diagnosis is like being

dropped, without your consent, into a new country with a language, customs,

terrain, roads and rules which are all foreign. You are in a Strange Place, and it’s

frightening.

In addition to the web version I printed off a supply of the booklet for

distribution via our support group – and local urologists and oncologists

– to men who had just been diagnosed and who did not (or could not)

access the Web version. I believe that there is still a need for something like

this – the median age for diagnosis has dropped since PSA testing was

introduced, but it is still around 65 and many men over this age are not

computer savvy. So I have now updated and internationalised the booklet and have

uploaded it onto this site – if you click on Files and page down you will

see it is there at number 5 or 6.

It is a biggish file –

843 KB – and it is 42 pages long, so it might be quite a job to download

and print it. I have hard copies which I am only too happy to send, free of

charge, to anyone who would like one. Just mail me directly at yananow@... giving your

name and full snail mail address and I’ll pop one in the post.

All the best

Terry Herbert

I have no medical qualifications but I was diagnosed

in ‘96: and have learned a bit since then.

My sites are at www.yananow.net and www.prostatecancerwatchfulwaiting.co.za

Dr

“Snuffy” Myers : " As a physician, I am painfully aware that most of the decisions

we make with regard to prostate cancer are made with inadequate data "