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I've searched this here, but don't find it. Pardon me if it's a duplication. (FYI, I'm in the United States of American.)
I know it depends on you and your situation, but I'd like feedback:
I'm Stage 4 with no PC related symptoms. Hormone treatment brought my PSA down from 15 to nearly nothing, less than 1. I am experiencing sciatica's brutal pain, but all imaging points to disc issues, rather than PC causing it. I start radiation this week and the plan is to follow that with chemo in January. I bring this up because it's looking like physical therapy and steroid shots are not working for the sciatica, so disc surgery is on the horizon. I have to finish radiation treatments before I can get surgery because of surgery recovery time. (I've been thru it before.) So, I'll have sciatica until min-January 2018.
I'm drawing attention to myself, walking with the aide of a walker or a cane and tell people the half truth of why. For the PC, I've only told my family (they live a thousand miles away, and locally, a few trustworthy close friends and support friends (e.g. a neighbor who drives me to appointments when I would not be allowed to drive).
I'm still working a bit. I'm lucky that I have a home-run business which rarely requires me to leave my house. But my clients do not know about my PC.
I'm concerned about letting all my friends know about my situation, because I don't want to have clients know (I have to assume the news will travel fast and I've got to plan it out that they would hear about it. Bad news travels fast and I'll become "the guy with cancer" and could be less likely to win any bids for work. Which is totally understandable. The hormone therapy is making me SO tired and I'm sure radiation isn't going to be a walk in the park at some point. I don't want to get in the middle of a project and not be able to drag myself to my office.
Does anyone in a similar situation have opinions on when they made the announcement about their PC they'll share? (Also, I'm musician and know 100+ people, and I'm active on Facebook, so it's possible several hundred would see the announcement. I wanted to post a bit of a diary to raise awareness of the disease and importance of annual PSA testing, but is it too early?
Sorry if this seems like a no-brainer, but for me it is not.
It is not a no brainer if you are still working as a consultant or even at a full time job, unless you have good job security. I know of one consultant who only told me that he had PC when he found out I had it and he did not want anyone else to know as he was certain it would effect his business and I am sure it would have. You might want to go to a support group meeting though, so you can unload some of your thoughts on a group of people with similar issues.
Thank you for your thoughts, Frank. I needed that sanity check. And thank you to those that emailed me directly. I'm going to hold it in confidence for this month at a minimum. I can see the end of the tunnel on my projects, the latest should finish this year.
I've never wished for NO work before. That is not a good business plan! :)
There's a support group I want to get into that won't be available to me until my insurance changes in January, so that's on my to-do list (thanks again, Frank...I needed that reminder).
