Then: My Anonymous Compatriot In addition to my guy friends I've written about, there is another chap to mention. I’ve never asked this anonymous friend why he is keeping secret his prostate cancer and surgery from his and his wife’s family and most friends and work colleagues. He only revealed his story to me, and reluctantly at that, when he happened to call in the fall of 2002 after being out of touch for a couple of years. We're good enough friends that I can tell him he's being a bit of a baby in staying so silent.

As an attorney with a Washington, DC Federal agency, he was lucky to live near and have access to one of the top hospitals in the country for prostate cancer, Johns Hopkins. As mentioned before, Johns Hopkins turns away many cases as advanced as mine. But, while my friend’s cancer was less advanced than mine, since surgery he has had to go through radiation after a blip up in his PSA.

As friends of 20-years plus, we were former musketeers in rather stupid behavior for guys in their 20’s. We even once entered a car in a demolition derby at the Iowa State Fair. He drove, got disabled early, but still climbed atop his smoldering heap and thrust his helmet in the air in triumph – a lifelong mental picture for me.

Now we could laugh about our mutual predicament. We reminisced about the past when we actually had testosterone coursing through our veins. We got a lot of chuckles out of sharing stories of hot flashes at work from our Lupron shots. We both sit in conference rooms with unknowing colleagues and wipe our brows while being embarrassed about looking flushed.

But I’m not happy about my friend planting the worry of ‘man boobs’ in my mind. Until he laughingly said one day that he worried about growing man boobs as a side effect of Lupron’s testosterone blocking, I’ve never heard that this could happen. So now I’m fairly regularly checking these protuberances. And thinking about the Seinfeld episode where George’s father benefits from Kramer’s invention of the Man Bra.

So, in honoring his request for anonymity, I still have to wonder if this secrecy is good medicine for my friend. The whole point of this book is to encourage you to get any story you have to tell -- of distress or not -- out there in a wider circle. Don't shut out old friends who just want to want to say hello because you can't bear the thought of sharing, well, whatever it is.  ¶ 1:29 PM