Howard Wolinksy is a journalist — by training and by profession. In 2010, a while after he finished full-time employment with the Chicago Sun-Times, he was diagnosed with low-risk prostate cancer, and he has been documenting the impact ever since.
His series of articles can be found on the MedPage Today web site. And his story epitomizes three things:
- The divisions within the medical community (and the urology community too) about the diagnosis and management of low-risk prostate cancer
- The problems faced by the patient who, for all the right reasons, decides that active surveillance is “the way to go” for management of his low-risk disease (even when things seem to be going well)
- The degree to which our our own curiosity and obsessions about our health can actually make a patient one of his own worst enemies — because we always want “answers”, even when good answers aren’t necessarily possible
For those who are interested in following Howard’s story, here — in order of their publication — are the five articles I am aware of to date:
- Prostate cancer: a patient’s journey
- A conscientious objector in the war on cancer
- Prostate cancer: driving the personalized medicine highway
- Prostate cancer: new directions with active surveillance
- Prostate cancer overload: informed decisions or information overload?
Filed under: Diagnosis, Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Risk, Treatment, Uncategorized | Tagged: active, Diagnosis, journey, surveillance, Wolinsky |
THE "NEW" PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK 
Cheers to a fellow poster boy!
AFter the first story you can’t read the others … as the registration won’t work ….
Dear Gordon:
I suggest you have another try. Actually I didn’t have to sign in to be able to read any of these stories … I’m only “signed in” so as to get the MedPage Today news feed.
Dear Gordon:
I suggest you have another try. Actually I didn’t have to sign in to be able to read any of these stories … I’m only “signed in” so as to get the MedPage Today news feed.
It must be my network as I got through story #2 but then the sign up came again for story #3. Should I disable my security software?
Dear Gordon:
Sorry … I have no idea why that is happening, and I certainly don’t pretend to know why your computer is acting in that manner in relationship to the MedPage Today system.
Well sitemaster, I got through one more story then it booted me off again. Guess will try tomorrow. I can’t even sign up on the MedPage site. …