Yesterday's PSA: less than 0.10.  Hurrah!

My oncologist does not like ultrasensitive PSA tests for men in my position (many years after apparently successful treatment). 

I'll take it. Even if my PSA is creeping up on the ultrasensitive test, the doubling time would appear to be pretty long--like a year or more--and so I'm not going to have any problem with prostate cancer for a long time, if ever.

Had a bunch of tests related to lymphoma as well, and they're all fine. That cancer is staying nice and sleepy, and not causing me any problems (i.e. it's not impacting my red or white blood cell counts, or my spleen, or causing any symptoms).

I'm now going back to trying to get my percent body fat down to a healthier level. I'm at 20% right now, and would prefer to get back to 18% or lower. I'd also like to lose a couple of inches on the waist. I used Noom before, but I didn't really like it, so I'm going to try MyFitnessPal, an app that counts calories, activity, nutrients, etc. Gotta get back into the hiking, biking, spin classes, and strength training.

Watching Reacher on Prime Video--it's really compelling!  I've read some of the novels. Well done on this one, Amazon. I think you missed the target on Wheel of Time, though. 

Heart Valve Replacement and Blood Cancer

 

I forgot to post about my mitral valve. Here's a mitral valve:

Mine wore out, basically. I had mitral valve prolapse for several years, and in the past 18 months, it got worse. In September I had it replaced at Mayo Clinic in a minimally-invasive procedure. While it's better to repair than replace, mine was just flopping all over the place (Barlow's disease) so now I have one that is part cow, part artificial--a bioprosthetic. It works great. I was out of the hospital on the 5th day and back to work a month after that. 

During the workup for surgery, the doctors found out I have stage 3 follicular lymphoma, an incurable but treatable blood cancer. Right now we're just watching it, because multiple studies have shown no benefit to treating before the cancer causes problems. In prostate cancer this is called "watchful waiting" or "active surveillance."  In lymphoma they call it "watch and wait." Some patients never need treatment, but most do within a few years. Treatment is a combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy.