Lessons from my book: Chapter 7 – Carving Out a Death
We’re now in the seventh chapter of my book, Get Back Up, I could no longer work in the fast food industry due to the injuries I 'd suffered in a car accident, and so I was about to begin a new career as a life insurance salesman. I would learn that sales can be a hard way to make a living and that some products are harder to sell than others. Life insurance was a very hard product to sell. I’d also learn that before you could sell a product or service, your customer had to have a need for [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 6 – Quality Over Speed
In the sixth chapter of my book Get Back Up, I have been released from the army with a service-connected disability. Thanks to the disabled veterans bill I’d be able to pay for college, but because it would be a few months until the next quarter began, I decided to get a job. I ended up working in the fast food industry, where I learned to manage employees who were also friends, and I learned that some rules are made to be broken as long as customer service and the quality of the product do not suffer. I also learned that just [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 5 – The Buddy System
In the fifth chapter of my book Get Back Up, Johnson and I join the army. It was 1974 and the United States was just getting out of the Vietnam War. It’s not that Johnson and I wanted to join the army out of some great need to sacrifice for our country, it was that we didn’t know what we wanted to do with our lives. We never really enjoyed high school and at that point we didn’t want to continue our education by going to college. Besides, we didn’t have the money for college even if we had wanted to go. [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 4 – The Way Things Work
In the fourth chapter of my book Get Back Up I talk about meeting my lifelong friend Mark Johnson, or just Johnson, as I have called him for years. Johnson and I met in 1969 and we remain friends to this day, seeing each other often. Johnson was from the type of family where the parents worked and the kids could be kids. As I mention in the book, Johnson had stuff. I didn’t have stuff. Most of all, though, Johnson was curious about everything while I was just trying to survive. Meeting Johnson opened up a whole new world to [...]
Prostate Cancer: Navigating Through Insurance Company Hell
It’s been a few months since my last article about my prostate cancer treatment. That’s the thing about active surveillance, or watchful waiting; there’s a lot of waiting. During the past months I’ve continued to get PSA tests. My doctor said that if the number stayed low, I could wait until the one-year anniversary of my initial biopsy to have a second one performed. My most recent PSA result was 3.7, and the time before that it was 4.19, so no red flags there, thankfully. My next biopsy has been scheduled for June 12th. I’ve been told if the results [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 3 – Journey’s End
In the third chapter of my book Get Back Up I talk about our family’s early days in Tampa. My father had used the money he’d finally received from the Social Security Administration to move us out of the projects of South Philadelphia to our own home in Tampa, Florida. He also bought a small family restaurant called The Little Inn, even though I don’t think he knew anything about running a restaurant. It was the summer of 1969 and I had just turned thirteen. My brother Dennis and I would get to work at the restaurant, bussing tables and [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 2 – Out of the Projects
In the second chapter of my book Get Back Up I talk about my first few months in our new town of Tampa, Florida. How we got there is a story of persistence; my father’s tenacity, not mine. I frankly learned very few things from my father other than how to block and duck a punch, and though those were very important lessons, a much better one was not accepting rejection or taking No for an answer. As I mention in my book, my father was disabled. To this day I don’t know exactly what happened to him, but [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 1 – Tasker Street Projects
If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I’ve been writing about my battle with prostate cancer. If you haven’t seen the articles you can find them here: https://georgeasantino.com/book/blog/ . The last article detailed my decision to go with active surveillance rather than surgery. This requires me to have follow-up PSA tests and another biopsy in a few months. While I plan to continue to write about this new challenge, there really isn’t much to talk about until I have the surgery or at least the next biopsy. So, I was sitting here pondering topics to write about in [...]
Prostate Cancer and Alternative Treatments
Since writing my series of articles about my prostate cancer, which you can find on my website at https://georgeasantino.com/book/blog/ I have received several emails and comments of encouragement. I have also received a few emails telling me of other treatment options besides the three I’ve talked about. Some of these are a little out of the mainstream such as injecting the prostate with cannabis oil, which they are apparently doing in Canada and Australia, and injecting herbs in the prostate, which is being done in a clinic in China. Others are very viable options like High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) [...]
Prostate Cancer: Decision Time
Hopefully you had the chance to read my previous articles about how I handle the news of hearing I have prostate cancer. If you haven’t here is a link to them on my website. https://georgeasantino.com/book/blog/ This is the fourth article in a series of articles I am writing about how I deal with this challenge. The last doctor I was scheduled to see was a urologic oncologist at the University of Washington Department of Urology. If I were going to have surgery for my prostate cancer this was the guy who would do it. I’d heard he was one of the best in [...]
Treating Prostate Cancer: The Choices
Hopefully you had the chance to read my first and second articles about how I handle the news of hearing I have prostate cancer. If you haven’t here is a link to them on my website. https://georgeasantino.com/book/blog/ This is the third article in a series of articles I am writing about how I deal with this challenge. When I learned I had prostate cancer I was told I had to make a choice about how I wanted to treat it. The urologist told me I had three options: One was active surveillance, two was radiation, and the third was surgery. Of the three [...]
You Have Prostate Cancer. Now What?
Hopefully you had the chance to read my first article where I talk about the shock of hearing I had prostate cancer. If you haven’t here is a link to it on my website. https://georgeasantino.com/blog/2017/12/01/you-have-prostate-cancer/ This is the second article in a series of articles I plan to write about how I deal with this challenge. After I got over the shock of hearing I had cancer (though I must admit I’m still not quite over it), I realized I had to educate myself. My urologist told me I had three options, watchful waiting or active surveillance, radiation, or surgery. [...]