The Beginning - 001

I woke up in the middle of the night with intense pain in my prostate area. It was a combination of aching pressure plus an intense urge to urinate and have a bowel movement. Little did I know this was the beginning of a journey leading me down the darkest road of my life.

Based on how it felt, I figured this was prostatitis, a prostate infection, so I called my primary care physician for a prescription of antibiotics. I was leaving for a vacation the next day and didn’t have time to see him in his office before I left. The antibiotics seemed to help but didn’t eliminate all the symptoms.

After another round of antibiotics, I saw a urologist who did a prostate exam. Typically, with acute prostatitis, he’d expect me to jump off the table the second he touched my prostate, but the exam was only moderately uncomfortable. The urologist said my prostate felt indurated, meaning it felt irregular, so he ordered a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test and a multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) of my prostate.

The PSA, or prostate-specific antigen, is a biomarker for all things prostate. It can be elevated with inflammation, such as occurs with prostatitis, but can also be elevated in prostate cancer. My PSA was 19.9, about four times the upper limit of normal.

My mpMRI results suggested prostate cancer, but similar findings can also be seen with prostatitis. I was in a dilemma in that my PSA and mpMRI results could be either prostatitis, cancer, or both. The urologist told me he had never seen prostate cancer present as prostatitis, so I latched onto that statement and convinced myself that this was purely prostatitis.

About this time, I found out that one of my older brothers had been recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. My urologist wanted to control my prostatitis symptoms before a biopsy to reduce the risk of complications such as sepsis.

Sepsis, a bacterial infection in the bloodstream, is an uncommon but dangerous risk associated with prostate biopsies. Men are at higher risk of sepsis from a biopsy if they have full-blown prostatitis at the time of the biopsy. So, we agreed to continue antibiotics to resolve my prostatitis before performing the prostate biopsy.

The prostatitis symptoms persisted despite the antibiotics. Three months later, my PSA was essentially the same. The PSA level being about the same lulled me into complacency about scheduling the prostate biopsy. I was so dreading the thought of having a biopsy that I was looking for any excuse not to do it. If this was simply prostatitis, being on antibiotics should have lowered the PSA level.

I think the overriding issue was that I was in denial about the possibility of having prostate cancer. I was relatively young, lived a healthy lifestyle, exercised regularly, and ate a very healthy diet. I convinced myself that I couldn’t possibly have prostate cancer despite having a much higher risk for it because my brother had prostate cancer.

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At this time, my father’s health started to decline rapidly. He was 92, and a series of events related to his health made me realize he didn’t have much longer to live. I flew home to be with him one last time. During Hurricane Harvey, I got stuck in Louisiana, unable to fly back to my home through Houston.

While I was home, I watched my father suffer, and I began to grieve his impending death. One day, while I was there, my father’s home health nurse showed up. It turns out he was a high school classmate I’d graduated with. We chatted a bit and caught up with each other’s lives. He told me he’d had a recent significant health issue, but I instantly knew what he was about to say before he told me what it was. He’d recently been diagnosed with and treated for prostate cancer.

Even though I knew what he was about to say, my stomach knotted up as he said it. He told me it was caught early, successfully treated, and now he was cured. Then he told me his mother had died last year and said the date of her death. How many people tell you the exact date of death of a loved one? Not many in my experience. He said she died on September 25th, which is my birthday. Chills went up my spine.

I had just been conveyed two powerful messages in a very short conversation. First, I have prostate cancer; second, my father would die on or around my birthday. How do you explain something like this? You can’t explain it from a logical or scientific standpoint, but you can explain it from a spiritual standpoint. It’s called a synchronicity, a meaningful coincidence that, in my opinion, is divinely guided.

I was facing two intense life-changing fears and had been given messages regarding both. It wasn’t like I thought about this information later and put two and two together. These were aha moments that occurred instantly during the conversation.

That night, I had such severe pain in my prostate that I got up in the middle of the night and had my older sister, Dianne, lay hands on me and perform Healing Touch. I’ve had a special bond with this sister since childhood; she is a registered nurse. She is trained and certified in Healing Touch, an energy medicine that I equate to the Christian laying on of hands. Healing Touch was created by a registered nurse and is used in hospitals, hospices, medical clinics, schools of nursing, and long-term care facilities worldwide.

The pain quickly subsided during that session, but I knew then I had to return home and have a prostate biopsy as soon as possible. The following morning, I gave my Dad one last hug. As he struggled to stand up and hug me, I could only say, “I love you, Dad.” He said, “I love you, Keifer,” which was his nickname for me. I walked into the kitchen, and my sister held me as I cried. I knew I wouldn’t see him alive again.  

I drove a rental car to New Orleans to catch a flight home. When I returned home, I called my urologist, who scheduled the biopsy. But it would be almost two months before he could add me to his biopsy schedule.

I had been dreading the biopsy because of its invasiveness, but it was time. It was overdue.  I’d waited long enough, and it became clear that my prostatitis symptoms wouldn’t disappear until I had the biopsy. In my mind, the prostatitis symptoms were my body’s way of warning me to do something! And that something was a biopsy.

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Shortly after I returned home, my father was hospitalized with sepsis caused by urinary obstruction from an enlarged prostate. Ironically, he had longstanding prostate issues, including chronic prostatitis and an enlarged prostate, but was never diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Hospice was called in, but he came out of a three-day coma and was brought home. Amazingly, he seemed vibrant and very talkative, wanting to know everything about what had happened. Everyone got to tell him how much we loved him during this period of intense clarity.

Shortly afterward, he lapsed into another coma. My family surrounded his bedside in a round-the-clock watch, and we sang old church hymns to him as he slept on a hospital bed in the living room.

For those who couldn’t be there, like me, we’d call in on our phones and sing along. During one of these calls, I had my sister put the phone on his chest so I could talk to him, tell him how much I loved him one last time, and hear him breathe.

Then, on my birthday, September 25th, he began to die. His breathing changed into Cheyne-Stokes breathing, a sign of his impending death. The next morning, as my mom was lying beside him, he woke from his coma and opened his eyes. She looked into his eyes, told him how much she loved him, and he took his last breath.

They had been married for 70 years and were best friends until the end. The synchronistic message I received while I was home had come to pass, and the other synchronistic message would be revealed to me shortly.

This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of my father, Sam R. Holden, Jr.

I love you, and I miss you, Dad.