Why should all men have their PSA taken, and plot the values annually.
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The objective of this page is to show why it is necessary for men to have their PSA blood test taken at an early age, and then have it taken annually thereafter. Exactly how early a man should start recording and watching his PSA is a subject of much debate. However, from the multigraph below one can see that I had several years warning as my PSA began to slowly climb. Since the values were so low, around 1.0, and I changed doctors several times during this period due to retirements, insurance plans, etc, no one was tracking this rise. We now know that many doctors and urologists are not even aware that a trend could be spotted several years before the cancer strikes. Now I know that in 2001 I should have changed my diet and lifestyle, and immediately started Active Surveillance (AS). Instead, what happened? While I saw a doctor and had a digital rectal exam annually, the PSA test was not taken in 2002, and the PSA test which was taken in 2003, a reading of 4.3, was somehow overlooked in the doctor's office. In late 2003 I noticed changes in sexual function, which I attributed to age. I was 63 years old at the time. Then, in April of 2004, I experienced severe Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms (LUTS). The rest is history, instead of having simple case of prostate cancer which was most likely curable, I found myself with incurable, Gleason 9, T4 cancer, and a PSA of 6.4.
