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IN YOUR PRIME
Support Groups
Q. You state men with prostate cancer should join support groups. Do you
have evidence that this association does any real good, either medically or
otherwise?
A. Men newly diagnosed with prostate cancer are muddled searchers, lonesome
wanderers, and under extreme stress. They are being asked, suddenly, to
make a decision as to their treatment. This indeed could be a life
or death decision.
Yes, their own life--or death.
What follows then is anecdotal evidence; what some in the news business
refer to as "grandmother research." You want good stories: go to your
grandmother. This story is both true and good.
It begins with a ringing telephone at suppertime near Poughkeepsie, NY.
Dennis O’Hara, survivor of prostate cancer and founder of a Man-to-Man
support group, picks up the receiver and hears:
"Mr. O’Hara, I’m going to kill myself. I have terminal cancer. I’m in pain,
big pain. I’m going to jump off the nearest bridge..."
"Hold on," Dennis said, looking to grab onto a counter-argument. 'Who are
you? Tell me your whole story; but please know that we can help you."
The caller explains he’s a retired business man with a caring family and,
following surgery for bladder cancer (melanomas on both sides of his
bladder), was recovering when a blood test showed he now had advanced, and
incurable, cancer of the prostate. "My PSA is over 400," he said, and
continued to describe how he intended to jump to his premature death.
As founder and longtime facilitator of his group, O’Hara answers all phone
calls, day or night. He is knowledgeable, consistently empathetic, and,
when called for, can be very funny, even irreverent.
After several conversational back and forths on jump vs. no jump, he
suddenly said:
"Look, you can always jump. But why not wait a week; come to one of our
meetings. We’re a small group; we can help. If I’m wrong, then go jump off
your bridge."
This episode, which interrupted both the O’Hara dinner hour and the
household equilibrium, lasted two hours. Moreover, it was the first of two
such traumas. When he dialed a second time, the distraught patient
threatened imminent suicide, announcing: "I have a gun... it’s pointed at my
head. I’m going to shoot. I told you I want to die!"
Once more, O’Hara, the professional listener, pleaded for the opportunity
to surround the sufferer, a soul adrift in confusion and pain, with men
"just like you. We’re ordinary guys helping one another through rough
times. Give us a chance."
At the critical meeting, Dennis O’Hara was prepared; so too were the
Man-To-Man troops. "The guy cried and then collapsed; we picked him up,
held him and said, basically, ‘Take it easy, friend. We’ll help you get
through this.’ And, we did."
In summary, the distraught man saw a local urologist and immediately went
on an anti-depressant drug regimen. He also started on Combined Hormonal
Therapy (CHT) and, significantly, lived another five years. O’Hara says,
"He lived to see grandchildren. And whenever we were together, he’d put an
arm around my shoulders and say, ‘This is the guy who saved my life.’"
This cancer patient, who once was just a stranger suffering a burden too
heavy to carry alone, eventually died. Yet, not until he had become a
zealot for support groups. O’Hara remembers the man lapsed into a coma, and
then succumbed. "It was peaceful," says O’Hara. As an epitaph, we quote
from this convert’s history:
"I had reached the end of my rope, emotionally. I was too unstable to
continue normal life. I found then how regular meetings with other men
become a must for those with prostate cancer. We need help... we especially
need to talk to knowledgeable people. Our group provides both fellowship
and much knowledge."
Writing of his private war against prostate cancer ("Intoxicated by My
Illness: And Other Writing on Life and Death;" Fawcett Columbine; 1991),
the late Anatole Broyard said, "Every patient needs mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation, for talk is the kiss of life." To buttress his theory,
Broyard quotes Freud, who believed that all cures, at least partially, are
talking cures.
I rest my case here for the admittedly unproven assumption that support
groups, at their best, save lives. Short of that, they make the hard
journey easier and less lonely. Consider, the Poughkeepsie Man-to-Man group
celebrates a 10th anniversary next month, and continues to publish a
monthly newsletter that goes out to 625 men. Men, it says here, who take
away a sense of well-being, and assurance, from their membership.
"Never call us cancer victims," directs O’Hara. "What we are is survivors!"
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Outrageous Associations
