Tom’s story
Needless to say we were all in shock. Only a week earlier I had no idea what PSA meant. Tom and Gun, as they had done before in business, accepted this challenge as a team. They felt that through education they would understand the options and ask the right questions. Over the next two years many angles were explored, many traditional and non-traditional treatments were tested and implemented. Tom’s first two-year struggle is best reflected in the following entry from one of his journals.
My name is Tom Denhart. Two years ago I learned what PSA meant. I had a 99.3 – I was a meat eating, sugar loving, and somewhat overweight person. Today I am none of those. I had no idea that since my father and his brother both had prostate cancer, and my mother had breast cancer I had a 20 times greater chance of getting prostate cancer than the average man. My cancer was outside the prostate so I took the only thing offered at that time; combined hormonal blockage.
But I felt there was more to do. My journey to healing began with Michael Lerner’s wonderful book “Choices in Healing” and a visit to the Mayo Clinic where I sat in a waiting room with 300 other men, all with prostate cancer. That was a shock. A week at Commonweal in Bolinas, California where we shared our grief and fear with six other cancer patients and eight of the most loving caring people I have ever met. I have met many wonderful people since joining the brother and sisterhood of those who have cancer. We need to support and share with each other. I have accepted, at least a little bit, the fact that I will die, but cancer may or may not be the cause. Only God knows when and how I will go but I feel he has given me a little more time. I have given up meat, dairy, alcohol, sugar and most of all high fat. My diet and exercise and full course of external beam radiation all combined to bring my PSA down to 0 soon after my diagnosis. It has remained so for the past 16 months. -Tom Denhart, 1996 journal entry
During this two year period, Dad had gone from: “You have less than three years to live,” to having the same doctor who diagnosed his cancer tell him: “If I didn’t know better I would say you never had cancer.” a remarkable turnaround.
I am a bit ashamed to say that during this time in Dad’s life, I didn’t help much with the research or get tremendously involved with his medical situation. Though we still saw each other as much as before and I certainly learned a lot about prostate cancer, we never seemed to have very in depth conversations. From my point of view I would almost say I had a bit of a head in the sand approach to dealing with the disease. With Dad’s health seemingly doing well and life somewhat back to normal, Pip and I decided to move back to Pip’s home country of Australia. With two young children in tow we did so in September of 2002.
