A medical journalist’s firsthand account of her battle with terminal cancer shows hope for a new era of “one-person” illnesses.

Nevertheless, prostate cancer is often described as a relatively low-risk cancer. ……

There are prostate cancers that don’t require any treatment; they just need to be checked once every three months and no drugs are used.

In reality, about 13,000 people die from prostate cancer every year.

For example, if a person with prostate cancer subsequently dies from another cancer, such as stomach cancer or pancreatic cancer, the cause of death would be the earlier progressing cancer. But if he had not had other cancers, he might have died from prostate cancer. There is no doubt that prostate cancer is also a life-threatening disease, and it is absolutely dangerous to underestimate it.

There was still a chance of cure.”

After the cancer is discovered, treatment begins. The three pillars of cancer treatment are surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy (anticancer drug treatment).

In Mr. Nagata’s case, the “Gleason score,” which identifies the malignancy of cancer, showed a high value of “8” on a 9-point scale of 2 to 10 (the higher the value, the higher the malignancy), so his doctor recommended surgery to remove the entire prostate gland.

However, Mr. Nagata refused to have a complete prostatectomy, and after persuading his reluctant doctor, he opted for High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU), the latest treatment method that his doctor was working on.

As a result, his PSA temporarily dropped, but it rose again, making surgery unavoidable. In June 2009, one and a half months before the scheduled surgery, metastasis to the thoracic vertebrae and lungs was discovered.

The choice of treatment depends on whether the cancer is at a stage where it can be cured or not,” he said.

In my case, when the doctor told me to have surgery, there was still a possibility of cure. I should have undergone surgery at this point.

But I insisted on preserving my sexual function there and dared to choose ultrasound treatment. I was told that ultrasound treatment might not be able to burn off the cancer cells sufficiently, and I knew this, but I insisted on preserving my sexual function.

I know this is a very cruel question, but when I asked him how he feels about that decision now, he replied, “I chose ultrasound therapy because it was the only treatment I could afford at the time.

I thought I could recover even with ultrasound treatment at the time. If I had been in my 70s or 80s, I wouldn’t have been so concerned about my sexual function, but I was about 55 at the time, which was still young for a prostate cancer patient.

I was 55 years old at the time, and I was still young for a prostate cancer patient. If it had been much later, I might have made a different choice. …… I think it takes a lot of determination for a man to lose his sexual function, but I hope that young prostate cancer patients will think carefully about their treatment. That’s where I failed.”

It was nothing at all like the TV dramas.”

However, when the metastasis was detected and the possibility of a cure disappeared, Mr. Nagata’s first thought was concern about money.

The first thing I thought about was whether I would be able to pay my medical bills, followed by what I would do about my work.

I am self-employed, so I can’t cause trouble for my clients, and if I don’t work, I don’t get paid, so I worry more about the immediate future.

So I can put off my own death because it’s my own thing. That’s what worried me the most, and it wasn’t at all like shedding tears like in a TV drama. In my case, I was fortunate that I was in a business that did not require much physical exertion, so I was able to continue working, and in a way I think I was lucky.

Mr. Nagata consulted with his editor about what to do with the book he had begun writing at the time, the features he was undertaking, and the serials he was continuing to write. Since his doctor had told him that he would be able to live a normal life for the next two years, he continues to make business trips and other activities as usual.

As a single person, he is also faced with the problem of housing. He considered moving in with relatives or buying an inexpensive condominium and living there, but his editors recommended that he give priority to convenience and he continues to live in the rental housing he had been living in.

In addition, even with the high-cost medical care reimbursement system, Mr. Nagata’s medical expenses in 2009 amounted to approximately 1.5 million yen (see this document for details). In the midst of all this, there was also a happy “windfall.