Prostate cancer survivors say Mayor Giuliani’s struggle to decide on his treatment and his new outlook on life are easy to understand.
“It’s not like having a simple headache where you take two pills and it’s gone,” said Winston Dyer, 55, who had his prostate removed five years ago.
“It’s like having a little devil on your shoulder that says, ‘I’m cancer and I might come back and get you.’ “
Dyer, who is district manager for US TOO! International, a prostate cancer support group that has 50,000 members, said the mayor is a far more introspective man than he was a few weeks ago.
“Prostate cancer humbles you,” he said. “This guy was god a while back. He was invincible. Look at him now. He’s humbled. He’s got problems in his house.
“When all these things happen, you’ve got to say, ‘Why has all this happened at one time.’ It humbles you.”
Dyer, who also works for Michael Milken’s Capcure prostate cancer foundation, says one reason Giuliani is having problems making up his mind is he’s gotten too much advice.
“When prostate cancer is diagnosed in the early stages, you don’t need six opinions from six different medical people, each with different medical terminologies,” he said.
But Dyer said now that the mayor has made up his mind not to run, he should be able to decide on his course of treatment very quickly.
“It’s tough when you’re political career interferes with your health,” he said. “Now that he’s made a political decision, he can make the decision about his treatment in one day.”
In announcing he was dropping out of the Senate race yesterday, Giuliani suggested he was considering two options – surgery and radiation.
Surgery involves removing the prostate. The five-year survival rate exceeds 90 percent, but the procedure can cause impotence and incontinence.
Radiation is either delivered externally or from radioactive “seeds” implanted in the prostate. Patients usually avoid impotence and incontinence, but survival rates are slightly lower than those of surgery.
Prostate cancer survivor Joe Torre said he isn’t surprised the mayor pulled out of the race.
“With everything that’s going on, health comes first and I’m sure that’s a big part of the decision,” the Yankee manager said. “It’s really tough to make something else important when you’re dealing with something like this.”