Stage four prostate cancer is a 10 on the Gleason scale, which measures the severity of the disease, with 6 being the lowest score and 10 the highest. It's not a good diagnosis, but treatments have progressed to the point that it is not a death sentence. Specialists told the New York Times that with today’s treatments, Biden could be expected to live five to ten years after diagnosis and end up dying of natural causes rather than cancer of the prostate. One specialist noted that Biden’s “moonshot” program to reduce cancer deaths, begun when he was vice president after his son Beau’s death from a brain tumor in 2015, probably contributed to the advances in treatment for the disease from which he now suffers. As vice president, Biden negotiated with Republicans in Congress for a $264 million increase in funding for the National Cancer Institute. As president in 2024, Biden announced $150 million in new research grants to eight cancer research centers at universities around the country, including Dartmouth, Rice, and Johns Hopkins.
My diagnosis came in 2018, when I was 71, when a blood test came back with an elevated PSA. My urologist did a biopsy and confirmed that he found I had a mild-to-medium case, a seven on the Gleason scale, with little spots of cancerous cells throughout the prostate, which meant they had spread, but were not yet fast-growing. It was terrible to hear, but I felt lucky, because he said the PSA test had caught it early. The cancer could be treated one of three ways: by removing the prostate altogether, with chemo or with radiation. Surgery sounded pretty extreme, and the doctor explained that it wasn’t recommended, so I chose radiation.
