About Biden’s prostate cancer and dealing with diseases “down there”

A diagnosis of prostate cancer Is a kick in the proverbial slats. Real. You don’t want to hear the word ‘cancer’ at all … always … ever … ever. But if you are male, the best time to hear it is after a blood test comes back with your PSA number unusually increased. The PSA number is not in itself a diagnosis, but it attracts your attention. Nobody wants to hear that there is a strong chance that they have cancer, but a high PSA number means that if you have cancer, are therethat considerably enlighten the diagnosis. Joe BidenThe office announced on Sunday that he was diagnosed with four prostate cancer phase on Friday. They have not provided many details, except to say that the cancer had spread from the prostate to nearby bones.

Phase four prostate cancer is a 10 on the Gleas scale, which measures the severity of the disease, with 6 the lowest score and 10 the highest. It is not a good diagnosis, but treatments are advanced to the point that it is not a death sentence. Specialists told the New York Times that with contemporary treatments, Biden can be expected to live five to ten years after the diagnosis of life and ultimately die of natural causes instead of prostate cancer. A specialist noted that Biden’s “Moonshot” program to reduce the deaths by cancer started when he was vice -president after the death of his son Beau by a brain tumor in 2015, probably contributed to the progress in treatment for the disease he is now suffering. As vice -president, Biden negotiated with Republicans in the congress on an increase in the financing of $ 264 million for the National Cancer Institute. As president in 2024, Biden announced $ 150 million in new research grants to eight research centers for cancer at universities throughout the country, including Dartmouth, Rice and Johns Hopkins.

My diagnosis came in 2018, when I was 71, when a blood test came back with an elevated PSA. My urologist did a biopsy and confirmed that he discovered that I had a mild to medium case, a seven on the Gleason scale, with small places of cancer-like cells in the prostate, which meant that they had spread, but did not grow quickly. It was terrible to hear, but I felt lucky because he said the PSA test had caught it early. The cancer can be treated in one of the three ways: by completely removing the prostate, with chemo or with radiation. Surgery sounded quite extreme and the doctor explained that it was not recommended, so I chose radiation.

First, however, I continued for six months of treatments with testosterone blockers to lower the ability of my testicles to produce testosterone. This included monthly recordings that include androgenic blockers who reduced testosterone that the testicles succeeded in producing after they had been hit with testosterone blockers. The thing about testosterone is that it feeds the cancer cells of the prostate, so by beating testosterone production, you reduce the size and number of cancer cells before the radiation causes the rest.

Bye-bye breast hair, bye-bye pubic hair. Bye-bye sex drive.

The radiation treatments lasted three months, for five days a week, ten minutes under the gun every time. There were side effects. I will not go into detail, but they were more than unpleasant. After all there Is blasted 50 minutes a week. It is sufficient to say that my things didn’t like it. Not me either.

But the consideration reduced the cancer to the point that it is not detectable. The word ‘remission’ did not have much meaning for me until I heard it from the lips of my urologist.

Something else I never paid much attention to when I saw it in the headlines in time or on the cable news shows, was financing for cancer research, or the snowstorm of Acronyms that came under the acronym, HHS, for the Ministry of Health and Human Services: NIIA, NIA, NIIB… Those letters stand for National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control, National Cancer Institute, National Institute for Aging, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioginering.

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To say that those letters are now attracting my attention, an understatement is. Last week it was reported that a senate report established that the financing for cancer research was reduced by 31 percent between January and April – 31 percent! The National Cancer Institute Only lost $ 300 million in financing compared to 2024. The parent agency, National Institutes of Health, was reduced by $ 2.7 billion. 1,660 subsidies to research institutions at universities and hospitals are completely eliminated or cut considerably. In total, according to the Senate report, $ 13.5 billion in health financing in April was reduced by Doge and the Trump administration.

Of course, there have been stories that the new secretary of health and human services suddenly realized that he had cut too deeply and tried to hire people again to cope with the decimant NIH, and judicial decisions have restored part of the financing of research fairs for universities. But there have also been stories that report that the damage has been caused, that health experts have moved in many areas that have been dismissed and do not return to work for the federal health departments that have been taken over by people who recommend that the measles virus are treated with vitamins and antibiotics, neither approved treatments for viruses as gemeting.

Joe Biden, who did more for cancer research to find healings than every president in recent memory, will now benefit from part of the research he promoted. While Donald Trump Jr. Jill Biden accuses the ‘hiding’ of her husband’s disease – who was announced two days after he was diagnosed – and Donald Trump also asks the timing of the diagnosis of Biden, Trump has effectively thrown the leadership of this country in the kingdom of cancer research, medical imaging and biomedic medicines in the prullen bin. American researchers are taking jobs in Britain and Europe to continue their search for treatments.

We may have a trade shortage in goods produced, but we have a surplus when it comes to exporting talent in every area of ​​medical research there is. The next generation of people who cancer are diagnosed, will have to look abroad at new healings, because four years of Donald Trump will probably damage the search for cancer, heart disorders and ailments that we thought we had eliminated, such as measles, that oneRe is now welcomed back to our coasts by a federal government that is run by quacks and charlatans.