Qualification prelude

Qualification is upon us once again, and the ranges open for practice Sunday morning. There will be the usual crowd of dedicated, conscientious officers wanting to hone their skills and the guys and gals who just like to shoot for free! Of course, those two groups are not mutually exclusive. Over the next few weeks, they will fire several thousand rounds of 180 grain .40 S&W ammunition. A few of us will add several hundred rounds of 125 grain .357 Magnum, and a similar amount of 158 grain .38 Special. (Yes, there are still a few of us old-timers toting .357 Magnum revolvers with .38 Special bugs.)


Then, there are the others, those that don’t like guns, don’t like to shoot, don’t practice on their own time, and don’t even remove them from their holsters between qualifications. Those are the folks who will fail to qualify on at least one of the three opportunities on their qualification days. (A shooter must qualify on two of three chances in order to work armed. If they fail, range personnel conduct immediate remedial training and let them attempt to re-qualify. If they fail that, they don’t work until they have retrained from day one of the firearms course and re-qualify since qualification with firearms is a job requirement.)

I’ve already heard some officers whining about qualification, their issue weapons, and the likelihood that weather will be inclement. Sometimes I think they’re in the wrong career field. I heard one of them refer to his issue handgun as a “boat anchor.” I’ll be working with him personally to resolve any problems he thinks he has…

ECS

Another follow-up; another cancer update

    Last week I had my second post-surgical radical robotic prostatectomy follow-up (every three months for the first year), and I’m still showing a prostate specific antigen (PSA) level of 0.0 so far. This is good news, although my doctor will continue to monitor my progress for the next four and a half years.


    While I was there, the nurse practitioner told me that they’d had a number of men in their late forties/early fifties who had PSA levels in the double digits and were scheduled for biopsies cancel their appointments after the USPSTF issued it’s recommendation against PSA testing. That’s just sad because, odds are, they’ll be back, in worse shape, and with a drastically shortened life span and diminished quality of life.

    Next update on this subject will be in mid-December.

ECS

PS: I would like to thank the scum-sucking, stalking son of a bitch on the Yahoo Message Boards that linked to my blog celebrating my prostate cancer. Although I'm certain it wasn't his intention, he has aided me in my efforts to educate mature men about the second most prevalent cancer that affects them. To him, I can only hope he follows the recommendation of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to the letter. -S

Quick cancer follow-up

After six weeks of convalescence from my surgery, I returned to work. My supervisor said he was going to give me a slow and easy post until I got my strength back completely. That lasted from 0700 hours to 0900 hours when he came to my post with another officer to replace me. Then he took me to a much busier, more visible, more active post. And his idea of taking it slow? I only worked fifty-five hours that first week. Since then, I've averaged around fifty-three hours a week with a peak of sixty-three and a half hours. Well, I was bored sitting around the house.

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Okay, I promised an update when I posted this, so here goes. The results of my lab work showed a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level of 0.0 (undetectable), which is to be expected since I don't have a prostate anymore. This is, boys and girls, a very good thing because it indicates that the cancer was fully encapsulated in my prostate and had not metastasized. So, every three months during this first year, I'll get checked out. It'll be every four months the second year, and then every six months for years three through five. At the end of five years, if nothing pops up in the meantime, I'll be considered cured.
The bad news is that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force advises against PSA screening. They have all sorts of reasons that don't address the fundamental fact that prostate cancer in younger men (younger than 75 years of age) will likely kill them within 15 years or less of diagnosis if left untreated, and the last few years won't be a picnic. Interestingly, there are no oncologists or urologists on the panel. If my primary care physician followed the task force's recommendation, my rapidly increasing PSA wouldn't have been noted, and I wouldn't have been sent to a urologist for a consultation. Without that consultation and recommendation for a biopsy, my cancer would not have been diagnosed until I couldn't urinate due to a rapidly enlarging prostate (which was already somewhat enlarged) or my bones started hurting because that's where prostate cancer goes. The end result of following this task force's recommendation would have cost me my life.


Guys, this is not for sissies. Get regular check-ups, and, when you get them, insist that you get your PSA levels checked. If they are rising or high already, have your doctor refer you to a urologist for further screening and possibly a biopsy. The PSA test isn't a good way to check for prostate cancer, but it's all we have right now.
 
ECS

Old School

Well, my boss finally listened to me. Y'see, CLEET has rules about the Armed Security Officer class: You can only carry the type of handgun with which you take the class. If you take the class with a revolver, that's what you have to carry. If you take the class with a semiautomatic, that's what you have to carry. If you want the option to carry either or both, you have to take the class twice, the whole class, and pay for it again, full price. I took the class with a revolver. It was my choice. When I was assigned to my current assignment, the office issued me a Glock 22. I tried to tell the boss that I was in technical violation of CLEET rules, but he had me qualify with the Glock and told me to carry it while he checked with CLEET. Funny thing was, he never got an answer back from CLEET. So, during an off-site event for which we were tasked to provide security for our local political figures, I explained, again, that I took the class with a revolver and that was what I had to carry to be in compliance with the CLEET rules. The following day, I went to the office, turned in the Glock, and drew a Smith & Wesson 686-6 .357 Magnum with a 4 inch barrel. The armorer then provided me with a crappy Uncle Mike's Duty Holster, 18 rounds of 158 grain round-nosed lead .38 Special, no speedloaders, and no speedloader pouches. Luckily, I had a decent leather holster, lined, black basketweave, that fit the 686 like a charm. I also had two HKS Speedloaders and two double speedloader pouches. One speedloader pouch and a double drop pouch went on my duty belt loaded with Remington 125 grain SJHP .357 Magnum ammunition. I was finally in compliance with CLEET rules. When I showed up at work carrying the L-frame, people noticed. One of the maintenance men pointed it out to the others, and one of them nodded sagely and said, "That's old school." Police officers ask about it, and senior people in the local government do, too. Strangely, the police seem to be in awe of the revolver, especially when my captain tells them I shoot it better than the other officers shoot the Glocks. Our elected officials seem oddly comforted by the old guy with the old gun. They don't know about the S&W Model 37 in a front pocket. This last weekend, I found two more HKS 586 speedloaders at the gun show. Yesterday, I put the other speedloader pouch on my duty belt, giving me four speedloaders full of .357 Magnum and two SpeedStrips full of .38 Special for the backup. The other security officers don't understand why I wanted to carry a revolver, but my superiors just look at my qualification score and nod. Guess I'm staying "old school." ECS

Cancer diagnosis and treatment

After several months of rising PSA (prostate specific antigen) levels followed by a biopsy, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in January. I sat with my wife rather stoically, somewhat stunned, as the urologist detailed my options. Options. You've just been told you have cancer, and you're expected to listen to options. Well,...yeah. What else are you going to do? One thing to consider, according to the doctor, was that the cancer was detected very early. My Gleason Score was 6, and pathologists couldn't diagnose prostate cancer below that level.

The options were: 1) wait and watch; 2) radiation: a) implantation of radioactive seeds in the prostate, b) external radiation, c) proton beam therapy; 3) hormone therapy in conjunction with radiation; 4) radical prostatectomy: a) robotic, b) traditional. After hearing the options, I went home with the doctor's instructions to read everything I could about all the options in order to make an informed decision; he wasn't going to insist on any one of them because I was the one who had to live with my decision.

Option 1, watch and wait, might have been appropriate if I was older, 75 or so, because the odds are that something else would kill me before the prostate cancer did. My urologist described this as not my best option.

Option 2, radiation in its various forms, would have a number of debilitating, uncomfortable, and downright inconvenient side effects. Radiation poisoning of the cancer cells inside the prostate means that you will suffer from radiation poisoning since there is no way to keep from radiating parts of your body other than the cancer cells. Damage to the colon, bladder, and urethra can cause problems long after the cancer has been destroyed. I'm told proton beam therapy might minimize those side effects, but it is terribly expensive and not proven to be more effective than traditional radiation.

Option 3, hormone therapy with radiation adds chemical castration to radiation milieu. Yeah, that sounds good.

Option 4, prostatectomy, removes the prostate (at a minimum) with the associated cancer and can have long term side effects like most of the other options above. There are the possibilities of incontinence in various degrees of severity and of sexual side effects. Disadvantages include a hospital stay and recovery from major surgery. In my case there was an additional risk due to previous abdominal surgery that even if I chose robotic surgery that the doctor would have to open me up to deal with scar tissue and adhesions.

My wife and I did our research and discussed all the options. Her bottom line was, "The important thing to me is that you stay around. Anything else I can deal with." I decided that the robotic radical prostatectomy would give me the best result: remove the cancer, minimize the time of treatment and recovery, and lessen the chance of long-term debilitation.

I had the surgery two weeks ago (It took 5 hours because the urologist worked through the scar tissue and adhesion issues using the robot.), and I'm feeling great. The pathology report indicated that less than 1% of the prostate was cancerous and that the cancer was confined to the interior of the prostate. Can't get much better result.

Today I went to the hospital for X-rays which showed no problems. Tomorrow I go back to the urologist and have every expectation that I'll be free of the catheter in the evening. Long term side effects will take a little longer to determine, but for right now I'll be happy to sit comfortably.

ECS

How is Peggy Joseph doing?

Ever wonder what happened to Peggy Joseph? You remember her, don't you? She was the woman who pulled her kids out of school to go see Barack Obama and found herself in front of a television camera where she breathlessly exclaimed, "It was the most memorable time of my life, I...it was a touching moment because I never thought this day would ever happen. I won't have to work out how to put gas in my car, I won't have work out how to pay my mortgage. If I help him, he's gonna help me."

Well, Peggy, how's that working out for you? Putting gas in your car regularly? Making that ol' mortgage payment? Getting those checks from your savior like clockwork?

Me? I lived through all the hype of the last presidential election, getting called a racist because I didn't support someone whose politics I find abhorrent, voting for someone whom I considered marginal because he was the only choice we had. I was forced to retire from one job because I still believed in customer service instead of minimizing the cost to the stock holders, to move into another career. So now I get two retirement checks and a regular paycheck in a growth industry with all the overtime I can handle. I'm putting gas in my truck and making my mortgage payments without any help from Barack Obama.

How about the rest of you?

ECS

Scary gun trade

Have you ever fallen into a gun trade by accident that just turns out very well for you, and it was the other guy's idea? Happened to me this past week. A family member needed some money, so I offered a more than fair sum for a nice (not terrific) Smith & Wesson Model 10-5 four-inch tapered, pinned barreled revolver. So far, so good, right? Well, to do that, I needed to sell something else, so I made a deal with a coworker to sell him a KelTec P32 that I hadn't carried since I shot it over a Chrony chronograph and realized how really underpowered it was.

Then, it happened. Turned out my coworker couldn't sell the gun he was selling to buy my KelTec and his wife told him, "You can't buy it unless you sell something else." So, there we were, both of us short of money and unable to complete the deals. Well, my wife moved some money around so I could complete the deal with the family member, leaving me with a KelTec P32 and a guy who wanted it.

I called my coworker to ask him if he still wanted the P32, and he allowed as how he did but couldn't come up with the cash. I asked him what he was trying to sell, and he told me it was a stainless steel Smith & Wesson snubnosed revolver. Figuring to help out a buddy, I told him to bring it into the office, and I'd trade him straight across.

This afternoon, we made the swap. I traded him a fairly well-used KelTec P32, a spare magazine, a box of CorBon .32 ACP ammo, an Uncle Mike's pocket holster, and a Fobus paddle holster for a Smith & Wesson revolver. Turns out, the S&W isn't stainless, it's nickel-plated. It's a nickel-plated Model 37 (no dash) Airweight with custom finger-groove grips with a palm swell. It was made in 1982, and could be sold ANIB if it had the box and papers.

I did ask my coworker if he was sure he wanted to go through with the trade, and he insisted that he did. Well, I tried to do the right thing...

ECS