Hello. I'm aged 52, diagnosed in November 2024 with Gleason 4+5 (9), original PSA133, but only visible spread to one small lymph node on a PET scan (Bone, CT, and MRI all looked ok). They are thinking micro spread in the bones. So I've been on Zoladex since January (continuing for three years), currently having chemotherapy (4 down 2 to go) with radiotherapy (20 days I think) to follow a few months after. I'm looking after my diet and health to better my chances. It is scary.
I've been having some thoughts of cancer research which I'd like to share. They go like this:
AI could be the technology that accelerates cancer research and brings forward a range of new tools for suppressing, shrinking, weakening and hopefully destroying prostate cancer and others. Although, from an artistic point of view, AI assimilates the work of artists, musicians and designers, offering non-discerning producers a way of getting something that just about does the job but for less money, from a medical standpoint, its ability to extract useful data at lightning speed from the vastness of the internet could be extremely useful.
Hopefully cancer researchers around the world are using it for this purpose already, but there may be some resistance. If you think you might be on the way to a Nobel Prize and funding grants, understandably you might also not want some other laboratory spring-boarding off your hard work and getting there first! So my hope is that all of these disparate laboratories in countries around the world are able to pool their knowledge for the good of us desperate cancer patients.
But there is no one more motivated to seek cures and preventions than us lot and perhaps we are the most likely people to spot something the experts have overlooked. A famous Zen Buddhist called Shunryū Suzuki, who possibly died of cancer himself, wrote, "In the mind of the beginner there are many possibilities. In the mind of the expert there are few."
In other words, beliefs passed on through training and dogma can get in the way: the novice often has a more open mind.
I actually learnt this from a programme on Radio 4 which told the story of the discovery of the massive 'interstitium' system in the body which had been totally overlooked until very recently despite being everywhere and carrying 4 times the fluid volume of our blood! The program is on the American Radiolab website (called The Interstitium) if you want to hear it. It gets very interesting once it gets going and is highly relevant to cancer. Please don't be put off by the wildly excited American presenters!
So maybe we could all start quizzing AI with well-thought-out propositions or questions and see what we can come up with? And maybe we will find something that triggers the experts in a different direction?
I have a few ideas myself...
