According to statistics about 240,000 American men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year. As of three days ago I'm one of them. Just shy of 65, I'm right in the sweet spot agewise.

I do realize that the odds, oddly, are in my favor. Many men with this diagnosis - perhaps even some of our family - opt to forgo treatment and just watch and wait, and there are stories upon stories of men who've lived until a ripe old age (I've always planned on 104 like my great grandfather) without it ever causing a problem. Or alternatively go through one of the various treatments with the same result. Still, we all know what it's like to have a doctor tell you that you have cancer, and nearly 30,000 die of this nasty business every year. This includes one of my closest friends, who had a radical prostatectomy and still passed on a year or two later.

I'm awaiting an appointment with a specialist soon to learn about my options, and I've already joined a couple of online forums. This will always be my online home of course... but I might be shifting my emphasis for awhile until I get this thing sorted out.

Uhboy... here we go again!