Came across something today I did not know existed. The VA is running a study called ProGRESS that uses a man's genetics to figure out his real prostate cancer risk, instead of putting every man on the same screening schedule regardless of his background or family history. It is still a research study, not something available to everyone yet, but it is exactly the direction I think this should go. Screening that fits the man, not a generic calendar. I want to ask this community something. How many of you know your actual family history when it comes to prostate cancer, going back to your father or grandfather? Not guessing, actually know it. I certainly do not know my family history. My brother is the only one left on my familys' side and I found out he had prostate cancer a few years back, but I did not know until this year. He has been successfully treated. Tell me. I am curious how many of us are working with real information versus none at all. https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

I read about Terrell Williams this week, the Patriots coach who was told he probably had lymphoma and it turned out to be an aggressive prostate cancer that had already spread through his body. It reminded me of my own diagnosis story, except mine was BPH, not cancer, and it still took someone else saying it out loud in an airport before I understood what was happening to me. I cannot imagine how disorienting it must be to get one answer, then have it turn into something completely different, and much more serious. He is in remission now, back coaching. That part matters too. This is not a story to be scared of, it is a story about what happens when people keep pushing for the real answer instead of settling for the first one, or not getting the answer at all. Has anyone in this community ever had a diagnosis change on them like that? I would like to hear it, if you are willing to share. https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

An event in Atlanta this weekend stuck with me. Morehouse School of Medicine paired free prostate screenings with free haircuts at a football-themed community day. Prostate cancer survivor Dwight Eubanks was there telling men to know their numbers. It got me thinking about this community. A lot of you have said your man will not make a doctor's appointment on his own, but he will show up for almost anything else, a game, a cookout, a haircut. So here is my question for this group. If you could pair a prostate screening with one thing the man in your life already shows up for without being asked, what would that be? Living here in Thailand, I think a golf tournament would work. Would an afternoon at the pub work? I want real answers. Might turn this into something. https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

BRCA1 and BRCA2 are known as the breast cancer genes. Dr Colin Pritchard, who has built a career studying inherited cancer risk, said this week that the name is "a branding problem". His point: men get the same genes women do. A BRCA mutation found in a mother or a sister means exactly as much for the fathers, brothers and sons in that family. It can raise prostate cancer risk and make it more aggressive when it shows up. But the label says breast cancer. So the result travels around the women in the family and stops there. I find this frustrating, and not because anybody did anything wrong. A family sits on a piece of information for years that would have sent a man for earlier screening, and the only reason it never reached him is the word on the front of it. Pritchard's instruction was simple enough to act on today: if someone in your family has a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation, get tested, and tell your male relatives. I am not a doctor, so take the medical side to yours. But the passing-it-on side is not medical. That is just a phone call. Has anyone here had cancer genetic testing come up on the women's side of the family? Did anybody think to mention it to the men?

A urologist in the Bahamas, Dr Robin Roberts, said at a press conference this month that of the men they flag for further evaluation after a screening, only about one in three actually come to the follow-up clinic. More than nine in ten of them had been contacted and told their result. So they knew there was something to check. And two out of three did not go back. I have written a great deal about getting a man to the first appointment. The awkward phone call, the wife who has to raise it, the years of putting it off. I have rarely thought about the second one. And on that number, the second one is where most of the ground gets lost. I think I know why, and it is not laziness. The first test is still a maybe. You can walk out of it and carry on. The second appointment is where the maybe ends, and a lot of men would rather stay in the maybe than find out. There is a man in that same report I keep thinking about. Valentine Maura was volunteering at one of these drives, handing out the forms, when Dr Roberts pointed out he had not been screened himself in two years. They tested him. He had prostate cancer. Caught early, not aggressive. He chose radiation, finished in November 2015, and eleven years later he says he is walking around as if nothing ever happened to him. Eleven years of nothing happening. That is the prize for going back. So the question, and be honest with me: has anyone here had a result come back that said come in for a second look, and put it off? What was the thing that finally got you through the door? I think the answer to that would be more use to the men reading this than anything I could write. https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about