The Importance Of Sharing Experiences

I wanted to write about this because it was such a positive thing.

Today I met a friend, who is also a customer of mine, for coffee. We hadn't seen each other since before my surgery and I'm pretty private and didn't share anything more than 'some medical issues I'm having to address'.

Over coffee, we talked about what we had planned and discussed what a crazy year it's been for us both and he asked how my medical stuff went. I told him that it's still going for a few years as I get tests done. He asked "wow, so you have to keep doing tests huh?" and I told him it was PSA tests because I had prostate cancer.

He shared with me that he's currently going through a bit of a scare on that front, how he has had his PSA jump quite a bit over the past year and it's at 4.8 now, the same mine was when I started with biopsies and all of that.

He was really privately concerned about his prostate issues and after spending an hour talking about my experience and what I went through and how I'm doing now, he was greatly uplifted from what was becoming a bad funk for him every day, dreading the possible reason for his PSA jumps - and this was due to another friend of his having a VERY bad experience with PC (ED/incontinence/depression/etc) so his point of view was very tainted.

The moral of the story is that we've gone through something very scary to all men - including us when we first found out. I've written so many times how impossible it was for me to find positive experiences for me to talk to in order to offset the deep funk I was getting into over nothing but bad news. We don't have to be preachy about things, or some kind of martyr, but we can share our experiences with others and we might just help them overcome something we weren't even aware they were going through until we shared and suddenly hear "wow, I'm dealing with that right now too and am really scared".

Helping him made my month, maybe my year. I told him, I'm the poster boy, I'm the success story you may want or need if this proves to be PC and know that I'm here for you day or night to talk about my experience and knowledge on the topic and he got misty because I think that's the first good news he heard.

In this case, sharing really was caring.