In August 2000, when Bruce Morton went in for his annual physical, he thought it would be a routine visit. And it was, except for his bloodwork, which revealed a prostate specific antigen (PSA) of 4.1, which got his physician’s attention. After a subsequent biopsy, he was told in December he had prostate cancer. His oncologist said Bruce should have his prostate removed, but he was urged to get a second opinion. He eventually got two second opinions at two separate holidays, a total of four second opinions and all four indicated the same thing: Bruce was a perfect candidate for brachytherapy, also known as ‘the seeds,’ a less invasive procedure in which tiny radioactive needles are placed inside the prostate to kill the cancer. In February 2001, he underwent the procedure and has been cancer free ever since.
At the time he went in for his physical in 2000, when residing in Hackensack, New Jersey, he had no reason to think anything was wrong with his health. He was a competitive runner, didn’t smoke, didn’t do drugs and drank in moderation. So, it came as a surprise when his bloodwork indicated a PSA of 4.1. He was sent to a nearby oncologist, who said a biopsy was necessary. It revealed Bruce had prostate cancer. The oncologist said Bruce should undergo a prostatectomy, the removal of the prostate.
It was when Bruce discussed his diagnosis with friends that they urged he get a second opinion, He went to one hospital in New York City, where two cancer doctors said he if wanted, he could undergo brachytherapy, a less invasive procedure. He went to another New York City hospital and again was told by two doctors he was a prime candidate for brachytherapy, also known as ‘the seeds.’ In February 2001, Bruce underwent the brachytherapy.
In the next few months, Bruce experienced frequent urination, requiring diapers. He was also alarmed to see his PSA spike. Doctors told Bruce the spike was not uncommon and with the passage of time, the PSA would come back down, which it did.
Bruce Morton has been cancer free since 2001. His PSA is less than 0.1.
By way of advice, Bruce advises anyone diagnosed with cancer to maintain a positive attitude.
Additional Resources:
Cancer Interviews: https://www.cancerinterviews.com
Fans for the Cure: https://www.fansforthecure.org
TRANSCRIPTION
Jim Foster: Welcome to the show. If you happen to be joining the show for the first time, I would like to personally thank you and invite you to be part of our team. We want you to know that you and what you are going through are the sole purpose of this podcast. We refer to ourselves as Team Journey. You are not alone. You are part of our team, and we are sharing the cancer journey together. So, let’s get started. I am so excited to introduce a very good friend of mine here today, Bruce Morton. Bruce, are you ready to share the journey?
Bruce Morton: Ready, let’s do it.
JF: Bruce Morton is a prostate cancer survivor. He has been in remission since 2001. He lives in Denver, Colorado. He has enjoyed a long career in the radio sports business. He enjoys international travel, and we can all learn a great deal from what Bruce has to share with us today. So, please join me in welcoming Bruce Morton to the show. Welcome to the show, my friend.
BM: Thanks very much, Jim. Great to be here.
JF: I have given you a brief introduction, Bruce, but before we start talking about your cancer journey, please take a moment and tell us a bit more about yourself.
BM: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and I became interested in pursuing a career in sports broadcasting dating back to a very early age when my father and grandfather took me to a college basketball game and right after the basketball game, my dad hoisted me on his shoulders, I was eight years old and I looked up and saw the broadcasters of the game wrapping up the broadcast, I was fascinated by that and that began my interest in radio and sports broadcasting, and eventually led to a career as I bounced around the country. In 1984, I got my big break when I was hired as a producer and reporter for ABC Radio Sports in New York. That’s where I was for 17 years and not long after that, I moved to Denver.
JF: I know we have been friends for quite a while and have had the opportunity to visit you out there in New York and we are so glad you are living in Denver now. Prior to your diagnosis, did you notice something in your life that led you to believe something was physically wrong with you?
BM: Well, I certainly didn’t feel anything abnormal. There was no pain or anything like that. It’s just that in the summer of 2000 I went in for my annual physical. It was interesting to note that in previous years, I would go in for my physical and I would joke with my father when I was done with the physical and tell him, “Well, I am not a candidate for prostate cancer.” I would say that each year and in the summer of 2000, my physician noticed something awry with my PSA just from the routine bloodwork that was done as part of my annual physical. That led to a chain of events that included a biopsy and then in December of that year, that is when I was diagnosed and learned that I had prostate cancer.
JF: So, it was just an annual physical and a blood test, checking your PSA. Those were the tests that ultimately led to your diagnosis.
BM: That is correct. I had a PSA of 4.1, which is not through the roof, but it was higher than normal, and that got my doctor’s attention.
JF: Gotcha. What was your initial reaction and your emotions and feelings when you first heard this terrible news?
BM: I was in the doctor’s office and as he said this to me, tears started rolling down my face. I couldn’t believe this was happening. The doctor’s office to which I went was only about a half-mile walk from home, so I walked there and afterward walked home. I had walked down this street hundreds of times in the time I had lived in Hackensack, New Jersey. On the walk home, it hit me and here I was in broad daylight, a grown man walking down the street just crying my eyes out, I couldn’t believe what I had just heard.
JF: Following that, did you seek out more than one opinion to confirm your diagnosis?
BM: Well, I have to go back to the day in which I was diagnosed, and I spoke to a co-worker who was based in Florida and we spoke on the phone. He suggested that I contact my former boss with my job at ABC. I contacted him and he suggested I get a second opinion because I was 47 years old at the time. He made mention that that’s an extremely young age for somebody to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, which was true, but he said he thought the doctor saying I needed to have my prostate removed was perhaps overreacting on the doctor’s part and that I should get a second opinion. My boss, who was no longer my boss, immediately assumed the role of being my boss, and he said, “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go to Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York,” which is an elite cancer hospital, and he said after that, “You’re going to Johns Hopkins,” an elite cancer hospital. He said, “You know how to find Sloan-Kettering and if you don’t know your way around Baltimore, I will drive you down there myself.” That really made an impression. What happened was, I went to Sloan-Kettering. I was there on Martin Luther King Day, 2001, and I got not one, but two second opinions, so I got a second opinion and a third opinion. They said I didn’t need to have my prostate removed. They said I was a perfect candidate for a procedure that was affectionately known as the ‘seeds’ in which the recipient gets these radioactive implants in the prostate and that kills the cancer. Anyway, a radio friend of mine in New York had been diagnosed with cancer also at a young age. We were approximately the same age. He was diagnosed about six months before me. I contacted him and he told me about these other two cancer doctors at another New York hospital, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt. He said he wanted me to see these guys because he said, “They saved my life.” So, I saw each one of those guys, a urologist and a radiation oncologist. I saw them independently and both of them said I was a perfect candidate for the seeds. So, I had gotten a second, third, fourth and fifth opinion. They all said the same thing, and by the time, I was convinced. As it turns out, I never contacted the initial doctor in Hackensack again, and in February, I wanted to be very proactive about this, I wanted it off my plate, and in February 2001, I went into St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and got the seeds and I have been in remission 17 years.
JF: So, it worked out very well for you that you had more than one opinion and that led you to the knowledge that you had different types of treatments available. It sounds like you made a good decision, talking to all those doctors.
BM: I felt that way at the time and I certainly feel that way now.
JF: Where did you get your operation?
BM: The procedure was done on an outpatient basis at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt in New York. The previous night I had stayed at a hotel a few blocks away, so that I could make a nice, short walk to the hospital, underwent the procedure on an outpatient basis, and that evening, a co-worker of mine from ABC picked me up at the hospital, took me home, stayed with me just in case something went wrong, which it didn’t, then he brought me back into the city the following morning and I went in for a followup visit.
JF: Were you working at this time, or were you able to continue to work?
BM: I took just a couple of days off, but in just a few days I was right back in there and working.
JF: You had very little need for any time off for any sort of recovery. That’s pretty rare.
BM: Yes, and I guess that is testament to the fine work done by my docs at St. Luke’s.
JF: Did you have much in the way of support?
BM: No, because all the people close enough to me emotionally were geographically a long way off, so the only person that was involved with my hospital stay with the co-worker who got me and took me home.
JF: What were the worst one or two inconveniences that resulted from the treatment?
BM: I would say there was a lot of frequent urination and it reached the point in which I was put in a position in which I had to track how often I went to the bathroom and I was given a plastic container that measured the amount that I had urinated. So, I had to keep track of when I peed and how much I peed.
JF: Did you have to have a catheter at some point?
BM: Yes, the catheter was inserted when I was under anesthesia, so I had no idea in terms of what went on when it was put into me. Then, with the followup visit the next involved the catheter getting removed.
JF: Were there any complications tied to getting that removed?
BM: That was probably the greatest amount of physical pain I have ever felt in my life, but it was like half a second. It was done right away.
JF: I remember you telling me once a nurse told you once the catheter was removed it would take awhile for things to start functioning properly. What was that waiting timeframe like and how did you deal with that?
BM: It wasn’t very long. The number one fear that I had going forward coming out of this procedure related to my ability to go to the bathroom. That was the number one thing and I was informed by the nurse that I would learn right away whether the muscles that allow you to ‘hold it’ when you are waiting to go to the bathroom, I would find out right away whether those muscles would be functioning. So, when the catheter was removed, the nurse directed me to a water cooler, told me to drink a few cups of water and in the next half hour you may have to go to the bathroom, the bathroom is the second door on the right, and “Good luck.” I drank a few cups of water, waited a while, went down the hall to the bathroom and tried for lack of a better word, regulating my urinating and there was some trauma in my urinary canal because of the catheter, and so that first time it was painful going to the bathroom, but I rejoiced at the notion that I was capable, the muscles that regulate whether you urinate or not urinate, those muscles were working and so, that was a relief beyond measure.
JF: Did you have health insurance that paid for everything, and if not, how did you pay for the procedure?
BM: I had health insurance. It didn’t pay for everything, but I think the procedure would have cost $11,000 and insurance paid for all but about $2,900 of it.
JF: What would you say was the lowest point of your cancer journey?
BM: As I learned later, with the ‘seeds’, with that procedure, it is standard that your PSA is going to go up at about the 18-month mark. Sure enough, in concert with that, my PSA went up, and so, I was concerned about that. I was told by the doctors not to worry it will come back down, there is nothing they could give me by way of medicine that will combat this, and I would have to wait this out. To me, that was cold comfort because I wanted my PSA to come down right away, and it didn’t. I was just going to have to wait like three months for my next blood test to check out the progress of my PSA. In three months, it inched its way down. It was the precipitous drop that I wanted, but it inched its way down. Waited another three months, then it took a much bigger drop, and then after that it dropped even more, and now I am happy to report that my PSA is less than 0.1.
JF: How did you deal with that stress?
BM: This is not an uncommon scenario, this happens a lot of times when people encounter an illness and the illness appears to be bigger than they are, I am not saying this applies to everybody, but it applied to me. I prayed some, I put my faith in God because I thought this was bigger than I was, that I could not overcome it on my own, that was and is part of the scenario pertaining to my recovery, then and now.
JF: Do you have any favorite memories of your cancer journey?
BM: I am not sure I have a favorite memory or moment, just the repeated good news that came with the results of my latest checkup. Once my PSA started veering in the right direction and getting back on course and reaching a point in which it was almost negligible, to go in each time and get a good report, that was very uplifting and I am extremely thankful for that.
JF: Other than the increased PSA level, did you experience any setbacks?
BM: No, I would say the worst part of ti was in the first year in which I had this really frequent urination. This procedure has manifested itself with my taking kind of a pre-emptive approach to peeing so that I don’t put myself in a position in which I have to go and I have to find a bathroom right away. As a result I probably go to the bathroom more times than I need to.
JF: Did you find you were in remission when your doctor said your PSA was less than 1.0?
BM: I kept getting good reports. I would say the best news of all didn’t necessarily come from a doctor. It came from a conventional wisdom that with my particular procedure, if you get to five years and you are cancer-free, that you have survived. So, when I got to the five-year mark, that’s when I really rejoiced. A doctor didn’t necessarily say, “You’ve beaten it.”
JF: Is there something special you did in anticipation of that day, and what was that like?
BM: As part of the work I do, I had covered a tennis event in Buenos Aires in 2002. When I was there, I happened to stay at a very high-end hotel, which is not consistent with my normal lodging habits. I stayed at the Four Seasons in Buenos Aires and had such a good time staying there that I thought bI really wanted to come back, but because of the cost, I said to myself it would have to because of something really special. Then it occurred to me that getting to five years, that was special, that merited something a bit over-the-top, so I returned to Buenos Aires and the Four Seasons in 2006 to stay a few nights to celebrate my being cancer-free.
JF: As for the present, what have you been doing with your life since your cancer journey?
BM: Well, I was working as a reporting in Denver, covering news and sports for Metro Networks, which was a national radio news service. In 2008, they experienced some financial reverses and they closed down a lot of their news bureaus around the country, including the one in Denver. So, I lost my full-time staff position with Metro, but continued covering sports for them on a freelance basis, which I do to this day. Without the benefits that come with a full-time position, that ushered in a very dark time for me when I was looking for a job doing something, anything to keep the lights on. About five years later, in 2013, I got a job with a hotel in Denver working as a bellman and I have happy to say I have been there ever since.
JF: Looking to the future, what would you say are your hopes and dreams?
BM: I am 64 years old, and I reaching a point in which I want to enjoy full-time retirement and taking things a bit easier. As I said, I still do my radio sports work on a freelance basis and I plan to continue to do that for something to do, some supplemental income, etc., etc.; but I am looking forward to retiring from full-time work, which I hope to do in late 2019.
JF: For listeners who are battling cancer, what words of wisdom would you like to impart?
BM: I have anything really deep or complicated, and the following is not an original thought by any means, but I would say this, and that is to keep a positive outlook about your journey and your battle with cancer. Healthcare professionals of every stripe have said repeatedly said that having a positive outlook toward your journey, your life can only be therapeutic, can only aid your recovery, your journey and your battle with cancer. So, keep a positive outlook, and I am not saying that in and of itself will cure you or turn things around on a wholesale basis, but it will help.
JF: Now it is time to close with what I call our highlights round. I will ask you a series of short questions and you provide the answers. First off, what was the scariest thing about your experience with cancer?
BM: I would say probably just getting the news that I had it. Once the procedure started, I always felt like I was in good hands, so I never felt scared in the operating room. As a matter of fact, just before the procedure started, I was joking with the OR team and I was making them relaxed instead of the other way around. So again, the scariest part was just getting the news and maybe the part 18 months in when my PSA shot up. Even though I was told that would happen, when it happen, when it did, that was scary.
JF: Can you give an example of something you accomplished during your cancer journey, and how that made you feel?
BM: The closest thing to an accomplishment is my knowing that I could still exercise strenuously. I used to be a competitive runner, but in an unrelated development, I was diagnosed with tendonitis in my left quad where it attaches to my knee, which has a slight affect on how I walk, but I am just thankful for every day that I can live a relatively normal physical life. I am very thankful for that.
JF: What would you say was the best of advice you received during your journey?
BM: The best pieces of advice were from my boss my ex-boss, urging me to get a second opinion, and then the other bit of advice was my radio friend who ushered me in the direction of the doctors who performed the procedure on me.
JF: I hope as you listen, you can take some of this valuable information and apply to your own life and help improve your cancer journey. Well, Bruce, we are so happy for you and wish you continued good health, and thank you so much for being so generous with your time, your expertise and your knowledge, and we will see on down the road.
Support Group:
Cancer Interviews: www.cancerinterviews.com
SHOW NOTES
TITLE: Bruce Morton, Prostate Cancer Survivor – Denver, Colorado, USA
Bruce Morton thought there would be nothing unusual about his annual physical in 2000. However, his prostate specific antigen (PSA) was an unusually high 4.1, which got the attention of his physician. Months later, a biopsy indicated that he had prostate cancer. The doctor making the diagnosis suggested Bruce have his prostate removed; however, four other cancer doctors told him he was a perfect candidate for brachytherapy, also known as ‘the seeds.’ In February 2001, he underwent the procedure. Bruce experienced frequent urination at the outset, but has been cancer free ever since.
Additional Resources:
Cancer Interviews: https://www.cancerinterviews.com
Time Stamps:
03:05 Bruce’s cancer journey began with his annual physical in 2000.
04:31 His reaction to his diagnosis.
06:59 After physician making the diagnosis recommended the removal of Bruce’s prostate, he sought a second opinion.
08:17 Wanted to get ‘the seeds.’
11:29 After the procedure, Bruce experienced frequent urination.
12:03 Recalls his brief experience with a catheter.
13:03 Asked about his top fear after the procedure.
28:30 Advises any anyone diagnosed with cancer to maintain a positive attitude.
KEYWORDS (tags):
prostate cancer
cancer
bruce morton
psa
the seeds
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