Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 31, 1995 TAG: 9505310049
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SALLY SQUIRES THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``Late in the evening, I would find that I had a strong urge to urinate,'' said Schwarzkopf, who had annual physicals and had PSA blood tests that hovered at 1.2, well within the normal range. ``I wasn't particularly concerned, but thought I would just stop in while I was there.''
The urologist scheduled a battery of tests after talking with the general and performed a digital rectal exam on him that day. ``No one ever likes to have that exam done, and I can't imagine any doctor likes doing it, except a urologist,'' Schwarzkopf, 60, said. ``But he did this exam, and it was so thorough that it almost brought me to my knees.''
Afterward, the doctor told Schwarkopf that he felt something unusual, but wasn't sure it was prostate cancer. The doctor scheduled another PSA blood test - it turned out to be a normal 1.8 - and ordered a biopsy.
Ten days later, the results showed early-stage prostate cancer. When Schwarzkopf got the news, he said, it left ``my brain just reeling.''
Schwarzkopf's next step ``was to get my hands on anything that had been written about prostate cancer'' and decide what treatment to pursue.
He considered watchful waiting - ``but I don't think that anyone with a type A personality could have cancer growing in you and get tested every quarter,'' he said. ``What a terrible way to live. I wanted to get rid of it.''
He vetoed radiation after investigating the long-term cure rates and decided that radiation pellets and cryosurgery were still too experimental to pursue. Radical prostatectomy was his choice. ``But once I decided what my course of action was, I wanted to make damn sure I got a second opinion.''
A few surgeons in Tampa offered to operate on Schwarkopf. But he wouldn't consider them once he discovered that they did about three prostatectomies a year. ``Everything I read advised getting somebody who knows what they are doing,'' he said. ``The guys who operated on me do six [prostatectomies] a week.''
The day after his surgery last May at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Schwarzkopf was walking the halls, his catheter in tow. He flew home to Tampa a week later, and the first day back, he and his 17-year-old son walked the half-mile loop in front of their home. Schwarzkopf walked the route twice the next day, gradually increasing his distance to five miles a day.
``I was convinced that if I could get my muscle tone back, my body would function normally,'' he said.
After doctors removed his catheter two weeks later at Walter Reed, Schwarzkopf experienced no incontinence. Impotence, the other common complication of prostate surgery ``is a concern for any man,'' he said. ``The nice way to say this is that with nerve-sparing surgery available today, coupled with the great deal of medical research on impotence, that problem can be quickly overcome as well.''
Slightly more than a month after his surgery, Schwarzkopf was standing in the middle of a roaring Alaskan stream, salmon fishing with his son. And in August, he went on a month-long safari to Africa. ``Life,'' said Schwarzkopf, ``has returned to normal.''
by CNB