It's kind of interesting that I found this today. I don't particularly know why I am paranoid about it, but
when I go back to the doctor on Tuesday to discuss the results of my cholesterol test I have to schedule a PSA.
That's something I've never had done. The PSA is the Prostate-Specific Antigen test. My insurance company
gives us a break if I get one every year, and from what I understand the FDA approved the use of the PSA test to help
detect prostate cancer in men over 50. No, I'm not 50 yet but it's an insurance thing. Apparently they also
use the PSA test to monitor patients with a history of prostate cancer to see if it has come back.
I did a bit of reading on prostate cancer earlier this evening in between dueling phone calls from one of my stores
and a waitress that walked out and it is pretty nasty (the cancer, the phone calls are an entirely different story.
Apparently it's normal to have low levels of PSA in your blood, but cancer and some benign conditions can
increase PSA levels, thus the test. I also did some reading on treatments as well. One prostate cancer treatment in particular that I found kind of interesting is
called HIFU. Apparently they are currently in phase three of clinical trials for HIFU treatment right now. HIFU is
High Intensity Focused Ultrasound. It uses ultrasound to destroy deep-seated tissue with extremely good accuracy
without any kind of invasive surgery. That's way too cool. I don't even pretend to understand the technical
details, I just leave that part to my wife and try not to nod off during the explanation.