Four years ago today, I went under the knife to have my prostate removed.
I had told the world about it in a blog post just days before the surgery — partly to process what I was feeling, but mostly because I wanted men to know about the PSA test that had caught what was quietly growing inside me. I had no major symptoms. I felt fine. I was not fine.
Today, I am cancer-free.
I wish I could tell you the journey from surgery to that declaration was straightforward. It wasn’t. What followed April 21, 2022 was more than a year of physical recovery, emotional reckoning, and uncertainty — and then, just when I thought I was through it, six weeks of radiation treatment.
This post is about all of that. But more than that, it’s a message to every man who hasn’t gotten a PSA test, and to everyone who loves one.
The Surgery Was Just the Beginning
There is something they don’t fully prepare you for when it comes to recovery from prostate surgery: it is cumulative. The physical toll doesn’t just come from the procedure itself — it builds. Week after week, your body is healing from something it never asked for. The disruptions to daily function, the slow return to normal, the fatigue that doesn’t announce itself but just settles in — it compounds.
And then there’s the emotional weight. A prostate cancer diagnosis — even one with a good prognosis — forces a conversation with your mortality that you can’t unhave. I had started that conversation before the surgery. I thought I’d finished it. I hadn’t.
Living with uncertainty has its own texture. You get through the surgery. You recover. And then you wait for the numbers to tell you whether it worked. For me, those numbers told a more complicated story. A year after my surgery, I began six weeks of radiation treatment.
Six weeks. Every weekday. A clinical ritual that becomes its own kind of life.
Radiation: Round Two
If surgery feels like the dramatic chapter, radiation is the long one. It is not dramatic. It is steady and relentless and, in its own way, harder to process because there is no single moment where it feels over. You simply finish. Ring the bell. And then you wait again.
I finished. I waited. And eventually, the news I had been holding space for finally arrived:
Cancer-free.
Two words that land differently than almost anything else I have ever heard. There is relief in them, yes — but also something more complicated. Gratitude. A renewed sense of purpose. And a responsibility to keep using my voice the way I have since the beginning of this journey.
Cancer-free does not mean done. Every six months, I still get tested. The PSA number that started all of this remains the number I watch most closely. That vigilance isn’t fear — it’s the same proactive mindset that caught this in the first place. I intend to keep it.
What I Want Every Man to Hear
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men. It is also one of the most survivable when caught early. The PSA test is the tool that makes early detection possible.
A PSA test is a simple blood draw. It measures prostate-specific antigen in your blood. Normal levels vary by age, but a number above 4.0 typically triggers further investigation — an MRI, and potentially a biopsy. My PSA climbed from the high 3s to 4.7 over a single year. That climb set in motion a chain of events that almost certainly saved my life.
Here is what I want you to know:
I had no symptoms. I felt healthy. I was active. Nothing on the outside told me anything was wrong. Prostate cancer is often silent — it grows slowly and without announcement, until it doesn’t.
My father was a prostate cancer survivor. That family history elevated my risk. I had been watching my PSA carefully for years because of him and because I lost a dear colleague and friend, Gary Papa at WPVI, to prostate cancer in 2009. Those two realities made me vigilant. That vigilance is why I am here, writing this, four years later.
The American Cancer Society and many physicians recommend that men discuss PSA testing with their doctor starting at age 40 if they are at higher risk — that includes Black men and men with a first-degree relative who had prostate cancer. For average-risk men, the conversation typically starts at 50. But the keyword is conversation — know your baseline, understand your numbers, and don’t let anyone wave this test away.
What I Want Everyone Else to Hear
If you have a father, a husband, a brother, a son, a friend — this is for you, too.
Be the person who brings it up. Men, statistically, do not go to the doctor as often as they should. We minimize. We delay. We tell ourselves we feel fine. Sometimes the most important thing someone can do is ask: “When did you last get a PSA test?”
That question, asked by the right person at the right moment, can save a life.
And if you want to do more than ask: support prostate cancer research. Organizations like the Prostate Cancer Foundation (pcf.org) and ZERO — The End of Prostate Cancer (zerocancer.org) fund research, provide resources, and advocate for the men who need it most. A donation — any size — moves this work forward.
Four Years. And Counting.
None of this happens without the people around me.
My wife, Megan, was there through all of it — the surgery, the slow recovery, the radiation, the waiting. There are no words adequate for what that kind of presence means, so I’ll just say: I am grateful beyond measure. My four kids — Jean, Daniel, Helen, and Robert — gave me something to push toward on the days when pushing was hard. My mom, my friends, and my colleagues at ABC7 showed up in ways big and small that I will never forget. You don’t fully understand what a support system is until you need one. I needed one. I had a great one.
What I’ve learned from all of this is that surviving is not a passive act. You don’t just get through something like this and go back to who you were. You decide who you’re going to be on the other side.
I decided to be someone who keeps moving.
Last season, I set a goal to cycle 1,000 miles. I hit it. This year, I’m going further — I’m attempting a century ride, 100 miles in a single day, before the season is out. It’s the kind of goal that would have seemed abstract to me before all of this. Now it feels like a declaration.
I’ve also kept pushing intellectually. I earned a certificate in AI and Business Strategy from Johns Hopkins because I believe that staying curious and staying current is its own form of health. The mind needs its miles, too.
Being proactive saved my life once. I intend to keep living that way.
Four years cancer-free. Grateful. Moving. Looking forward.
If this post resonated with you, please share it. Tag a man in your life who needs to read it. And visit pcf.org or zerocancer.org to learn more or support the research that makes stories like mine possible.
You can read my original post — written just before my surgery in 2022 — here.
The World According to Bob 