Persistence - and some luck - pays off for prostate cancer survivor

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- One of the biggest strokes of luck in Wesley Williams' life was having a doctor who'd spent a lot of time as a military physician.

The doctor had done countless digital rectal examinations and was sensitive to the most minor changes to a man's prostate gland.

That's how Williams, a former chairman of the Richmond , Va. , branch of the Federal Reserve Bank, learned 10 years ago, at age 54, that he might have prostate cancer.

"I had no symptoms, but he [the doctor] had felt something that made him wonder," said Williams, now a business entrepreneur living on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands .

The doctor also had a good amount of data regarding the level of prostate-specific antigen in Williams' body. Williams is African-American and began getting screened for prostate cancer in his 40s, since blacks are at higher risk for the disease.

"He had a good baseline for reviewing my PSA velocity," Williams said. "The number was not high, but he saw in it a number that was going up too fast."

Williams had a biopsy done at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore that seemed to confirm his doctor's concerns.

Only, the specialist who performed the biopsy didn't see it that way.

"He came in and said, 'I've got good news and great news,' " Williams recalled. "'The good news is we found something -- which can be like finding a needle in a haystack in early detection -- and the great news is, it's relatively small and appears to be early stage, which means we can do something definitive about it.'"

Williams had a hard time sharing his doctor's enthusiasm, but he found that his fear was tempered with a good dose of curiosity.

"I was fascinated by the whole process," Williams said. So, he dove into the literature on prostate cancer and its treatments. "There was some fear there, and a huge fascination with what was going on," he said.

Williams underwent surgery using an epidural and woke rather quickly in the recovery room. He immediately put some of his research to use, looking up at a clock.

"They say it's better if it's a long surgery than a short one," he said. "If it's relatively short, that means they found that cancer has metastasized and stopped what they were doing, sewn you up, so they can go back and review the options."

The clock told him that his surgery had been fairly short.

By the time the doctor got to him, Williams had become concerned about the shortness of the surgery. He asked about it, and the doctor smiled.

"He told me, 'It was so short, because it was so easy,' " Williams said.”Yours was obviously organ-contained, and the definition was clear enough to get it all taken care of speedily.'"

Williams did not have to go through chemotherapy and suffered no side effects from the surgery. In short, he considers himself blessed.

He's also given his sons early warning that they, too, need to get screened starting at age 40, since they have the double risk factor of being black and having a father who suffered prostate cancer.

"Keep it in mind," Williams said. "It sneaks up on you."

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