Travels around my prostate #3

Written 8 March 2014

The operation was set for Tuesday 4 March.  Normally there is a 6 week to 3 month wait however I had told Kris Rasiah, my urologist, that I wanted to fly out of Australia on 26 May to attend my nephew’s wedding in California.  He managed to get a slot on the Robot machine at the SAN hospital in North West Sydney on 4 March so the date was set.

Also I had been recommend to go to Stuart Baptist prior to the operation to learn how to Kegel exercises – improving your pelvic floor muscles.  I saw him Friday 21 February and was very impressed.  He also told me that Kris Rasiah trained under Phillip Stricker (the name in Sydney) for several years and was his assistant.  When Rasiah decided to go out on his own Stricker was pulling his hair out to get as good a replacement.  This was comforting.

Having now watched the DVD they give you about the operation and learned about more nerve sparing as part of the benefits I did call Kris and said how about sparing the nerves. 

He first said that there were 3 objectives with a prostatectomy:

1.      Removal of any cancer

2.      Reducing the risk of incontinence

3.      Reducing the risk of erectile dysfunction.

In my case as I was 69 and obviously had had a good life the third objective was very low priority.

He then rang up and suggested another scan an MRI which again normally takes about 3-4 weeks to schedule but he found a slot in Randiwick (South Sydney) at 8am on Friday 28 Feb.  The scan came back that the cancer was localised on the right hand side of the prostate so Kris decided to keep the lymph nodes and nerves on the right. 

The operation was about six hours and started at 2pm.  My only two memories were the anaesthetist having difficulty inserting the canula in a big enough vein and meeting the back-up surgeon about 5 minutes going in who turned out to be some absolute gun who had done prostatectomies in Los Angeles, Paris, London etc at all the top hospitals.  My wife got a phone call at 9pm saying that it had gone very well.

The drawback of the robotic surgery is that they fill you with gas and it takes about 24 hours for the body to expel it.  It is a relatively painful experience but does pass.

The hospital was terrific.  I was in a private room right at the end of the corridor which was very quiet.  Vivienne could not believe how quiet it was and said Louisa would be so jealous.  She had our first granddaughter three weeks earlier and was in a private room between two squalling babies and had little sleep.  The nurses were great – I was impressed with the SAN.

Anyway we left the hospital on Friday catheter attached which comes out next Thursday.

This morning I had a phone call from Kris Rasiah who was particularly jubilant.

I have fantastic news.  The cancer was big 4.7cc and we regard over 2cc as large.  However it was localised on the right hand side but had not broken the capsule.  The dissection of the right hand lymph nodes showed no cancer present so the strategy of leaving the left lymph nodes and nerves alone was perfect.  On the other hand I am so glad we operated now as the cancer was bigger than any of us expected.  You could not have better news.

Travels around my prostate #2

This was written on 14 February 2014 post the biopsy procedure on Friday 17 January 2014

It has been an interesting couple of days.

First the very good news was that my diagnosed prostate cancer had not spread.  On Monday 3 February.  I had the CT and nuclear bone scans which were thankfully negative.

Secondly this must be the biggest men’s club in the world.  It seems 50% of all the people I now talk to have had prostate issues.  I have now since learnt the odds for getting some cancer in your life time are 1 in 2 for men and 1 in 3 for women.  Two forms (that’s me) is 1 in 10 and three types is 1 in 100.

When I started on this journey I had radiation treatment as preference over surgery on the basis the latter made you both incontinent and impotent.  Also I was worried about the risk of infection.  My good friend Antony Mayer has gone in for triple bypass which was meant to be for 7 days and 48 days later staggered out of the hospital because he had unfortunately picked up an infection.

I then learned about the ‘seeds’ or brachytherapy which as it takes only one day to insert and little risk of side effects sounded the best.  However during Tuesday’s meeting with the radiation doctor I found out my prostate is too big and I would require six months of female hormone therapy to reduce its size before they would contemplate putting in the radioactive iodine.  Also he would recommend a combined radiation procedure that would take visits every weekday for 6 weeks and if you have ever tried to park at Mater where the radiation would take place you would know that it was impossible.

Finally you can have radiation post surgery if there are complications, however as the radiation fries the prostate inside you surgery post radiation is much difficult.  Remembering both the great words from Hamlet:  We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all and the one bit of advice I kept getting was don’t mess around we decided to discard radiation..

So on Wednesday after a long discussion with the urologist we decided to do the operation ASAP.  You have two choices the robot (De Vinci) or open surgery.  The public health service only offers open as robot as it is too expensive so that made up my mind, robotic it is.  Here is a clip about the process http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ_3GJNz4fg.

It turns out this is what why elder daughter Louisa had when they removed a dermoid cyst last year.

However there was another glitch is that I had to see a cardiologist to see if I my heart would survive the operation.  That was Friday’s little fun event but that went ok and I was given the go ahead.

The operation has now been provisionally booked for Tuesday 4 March.

Some interesting observations/advice:

If you are diagnosed with PC over 80 they just let you die.  Surgery is regarded as too dangerous.

Make sure you have drunk all the good wines in your cellar.

A dead man has no libido.

Travels around my prostate #1

This was written on 20 November 2013 and if you are over 50 and male could be the most important blog you will read this year

I have just finished reading The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction by Nate Silver. The book discusses a how a diverse set of forecasts ranging from politics, baseball and the weather are prepared, the errors that are often made and how in many cases ‘expert predictions’ should be treated with many grains of salt.

However a real strength of the book is the description of Bayesian reasoning in Chapter 8 which is a technique every manager should learn.  A lot of management effort and time is spent altering forecasts as new information is received.  Unfortunately most of us just apply such information intuitively.  Bayes allows to you make better predictions. This book made me really learn about Bayes Theorem.  I am the first to admit that although I had listened to lectures about Bayes at both Cambridge and London Business School I have never really sat down and learned it.

Simply put one starts out with a prior probability.   One then takes the probabilities of a new event being either true or false and then calculates a posterior probability. Say x equals the prior probability, y equals a new event probability that is true, and z equals a new event probability that is false. The posterior probability is xy over xy plus (1-x)z. The secret to Bayes is calculating both the true and false positives.  An example will make this much clearer.

Say for example there has been an accident in a city involving a taxi cab.

* 85% of the cabs in the city are white, and 15% are silver.

* A man identified the cab involved in a hit and run as silver.

* The court tested the witness' reliability, and the witness was able to correctly identify the correct color 80% of the time, and failed 20% of the time.

What is the probability the taxi cab was silver?

Here's how we figure it out using Bayes theorem.

If the cab was silver, a 15% chance, and correctly identified, an 80% chance, the combined probability is .15 * .8 = .12, a 12% chance. These are true positives.

If the cab was white, an 85% chance, and incorrectly identified, a 20% chance, the combined probability is .85 * .2 = .17, a 17% chance. These are false positives

Since the cab had to be either white or silver, the total probability of it being identified as silver, whether right or wrong, is .12 + .17 = .29. In other words, this witness could be expected to identify the cab as silver 29% of the time whether he was right or wrong.

The chances he was right are .12 out of .29, or 41% which I would suggest is much lower that people would expect.

Now recently I took a PSA test and my reading was above the supposed danger level.  What is the probability I have prostate cancer?

The chances of having prostate cancer at various ages are as follows:

For a man in his 40s - 1 in 1000

For a man in his 50s - 12 in 1000

For a man in his 60s - 45 in 1000

For a man in his 70s - 80 in 1000

I am 69 so my chances of prostate cancer would be 63 in 1000. However I have now had a positive PSA test result.

Now according to a medical website for every 100 men over age 50, with no symptoms, who have the PSA test:

10 men out of 100 tested will have a higher than normal level of PSA. These men must then go through other tests and examinations. At the end of these tests:

• Three of the ten men with a higher than normal PSA level will be found to have prostate cancer.

• Seven of the 10 men with a higher than normal PSA level will be found not to have prostate cancer at the time of screening.

90 men out of 100 tested will have a normal PSA level. Of these 90 men:

• 88 of the men with a normal PSA level will not have prostate cancer.

• One or two of the men with a normal PSA level will actually have prostate cancer, undetected by the test.

The probability that the PSA test gives a true positive for me is 0.063 x 88/90 or 0.0616 (xy in the formula; note two people out of 90 are missed.)

The probability that the PSA test gives a false positive for me is 0.927 x .07 or 0.0656 ((1-x)z in the formula.

The sum of the true and false positives is 0.1272 and so according to Bayes the probability that I have prostate cancer is 48% which is much higher than I originally thought and means that I will definitely go forward with a biopsy.  

I never would have come to this conclusion without reading Silver's book. 

Chris Golis Australia's expert on practical emotional intelligence website: www.thehummhandbook.com Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgolis blog: blogs.bnetau.com.au/aussierules/category/improving-your-eq/ mobile: +61-418-222219

Engand-France 2013

Travel Blog England France 2013

The trip started on Wednesday 14 May.  This time we took a different way to London, flying first to Tokyo on Qantas and then Japan Airlines to London.  I love sushi and tempura, meat and picked cabbage leave me cold.  Anyway we had some yen from a previous trip and we managed to spend it all in the duty free.  I now have a five year supply of aftershave.

We arrived in London on Thursday evening to stay with Virginia and Pierre.  It was an uneventful night except for my wife tripping over, hitting her head on a side panel, becoming concussed and vomiting all night.  However there was no bruising so I deemed her condition as satisfactory.  This led to a barrage of emails from my two daughters about the necessity of going to the hospital and having brain scans which was eventually done on Tuesday morning.  It was all done in several hours, no charge and no damage detected.

The next day I had to go to St Pancreas to see if I could get a refund on my doubly booked non refundable Eurostar tickets.  I managed to get a credit note till the end of November which is not all that helpful but you never know. I then did The Secret London tour presented by Richard Jones and organised by www.londonwalking.co.uk.  It was a great tour, highly recommended and augmented by the fact that I was going to spend the next two nights in the City of London area.  In the evening I ticked off an item on my bucket list which was to attend a performance in the Shakespeare Globe Theatre.  The performance was King Lear which was done by their travelling tour which meant most of the actors had two roles.  For example Cordelia and the Fool were played by the same actor.  Three things about the Globe should be mentioned.  First of all it is built to the original specifications defined in 1599.  People were smaller then and you are incredibly crammed if you are sitting in the galleries. If you choose to stand in the pit, watch out for falling bodies from people fainting particularly young women in high heels (there is a medical team ready to pounce on swooning bodies).  Finally it is an open air theatre and it was an unseasonably cold night.  In other words I only lasted the first part of the performance which was 2 hours.

The next two days were spent at the London Business School Renunion which is held every year but attended by those alumni who graduated in a 5 year multiple.  Our cohort graduated in 1973 but there were alumni from 1983, 1998 etc.  Over 1,000 alumni attended the Friday evening cocktail party at the Museum of London which like the days was brilliantly organised.  On Saturday night each alumni group then repairs to a private function.  For our group (the full time MBA students who graduated in 1973) we had a dinner for over 40 people at the Founders' Hall in Cloth Fair, EC.  This was again superbly organised by David Rose, Philip Craig and Tony Hoskins and it was a great evening catching up with old friends.

On Tuesday, two old friends, Anthony Mayer and Eric Sorenson, and I drove down to Littlehampton for a game of miniature golf (the Littlehampton course is where the UK championships are held) and lunch at the East Beach Cafe (www.eastbeachcafe.co.uk) which is famous for being designed by Thomas Heatherwick who is now even more famous as the designer of the London Olympic Cauldron.  That night we went Annies with Ann and Anthony which is a good Chiswick restaurant.

Wednesday was even busier.  First we (Vivienne, Virginia, Pierre and I) went to the Royal Academy to see an exhibition by George Bellows an early 20^th century American painter who I had never heard of but was interesting in his depictions of New York.  Then we went to Fortum and Mason for high tea.  Vivienne was ecstatic as they had gluten-free scones.  This is a London icon and a must do if you are in London.  Then Vivienne and I dashed down to Blakes in South Kensington to catch up with Peter Lampl and his gorgeous wife Susan,  We had an hour together before we then went back to the London Palladium to catch a performance of A Chorus Line. 

The next day I drove down to Deal to play a golf game with John Hamer.  We had a good game (when you win it is always a good game) on the white cliffs of Dover playing at John’s course Walmer and Kingsdown.

On Friday it was reunion time again, this time for those people who graduated from the City of Bath Boys School 50 years ago in 1963.  While the school had changed its name during 1970 Grammar School dissolutions to Beecham Cliff, it still had many of the same buildings.  The idea for the reunion was concocted the previous year in Italy over a bottle of Chianti by Anthony Mayer, Peter Arnold and myself.  I said I would come if we made it the weekend after the LBS Reunion.  Having made the major decision I then delegated the rest of the organisation to Anthony and Peter.  They did a great job and over 20 people attended from such diverse places as Vancouver, Vail and New Zealand.  We had a great lunch at the school followed by drinks at the Old Green Tree and dinner at the Rajpoot.  The next day we had pitch and putt tournament won by John Rogers who was presented with a specially designed tie I had brought from Australia.  Then we a had a great dinner at Alium followed the next morning with a canal walk and lunch at the George in Bathampton.

The next day (Monday 27/05/2013) we took the Eurostar to Paris.  We were staying for the next five days in an apartment in Montparnasse.  It was found via www.petiteparis.com.au which has a good portfolio of family places to stay in Paris.  The organiser, Regina Ferreira is an organisational disaster but our hosts were very friendly and nice.  We were staying between the Luxemburg Gardens and the Boulevard Montparnasse which is not a bad location.  I have put up reviews of the restaurants, hotels and sights on Trip Advisor (http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/members-reviews/EQexpert) but would recommend La Closerie de Lilas and Bistrot Vivienne.  Highlights of the stay in Paris were the Opera Garnier and a one man show called How to become Parisian in one hour.  It was absolutely hysterical.  Rule #1 Never stand for a pregnant woman in the metro; you have played, you pay.  Rule #2 Your attitude to other people is simple: Do I know you? Do I care?

The low light was Roland Garros.  I had booked two days on the internet.  Tuesday it rained solidly for the five hours we were there.  My current line is that I went to Roland Garros and I bought an umbrella.  After five hours we gave up and play finally started at 4pm.  Thursday we actually saw 1.5 sets of tennis but it started raining heavily again around 4pm and we left.  There was nowhere to sit as those who had got a table just sat there because they were dry and most were Parisians following rule #2.

Still of all cities to stay in Paris must rate as one the best.  The beauty of the buildings around the Seine never fails to impress and if it is raining you can dive into either a cafe, museum or church except if you are at Roland Garros where they do not allow pass-outs.

We then took the train down to Bordeaux, known previously as the Sleeping Beauty, but due to efforts of its mayor, former Prime Minister Juppe has developed a stunning pedestrian town centre serviced by modern trams.  Our hotel, Le Boutique, was terrific.  Town planners around the world should visit Bordeaux, of course given Bordeaux also defines itself as the wine capital of the world, if asked they will go.  After doing a wine tour to Medoc, we then hired a car and visited Cadillac (Entre-Deux-Mers) and St Emilion, which is a stunning village and well worth a visit.  Vivienne persuaded me to go into a wine shop that had a wood handled corkscrew in the window and 24 bottles later we finally left one very happy shopkeeper.

For the nxt 10 days we then drove though the south of France ending up at Nice Airport.

Our first stop was Biarritz where we stayed at a great hotel, Hotel de Silhouette which I recommend highly.  We visited to St Jean de Luz and had great lunch on the town square.

We then drove to Carcassone.  Great hotel with great parking but the town centre was tacky and over-commercialised mock medieval.  Then we went to Nimes where the two big attractions are the Roman ruins of the Arena and the Maison Carre.  Parking and driving to the hotel was a nightmare.  The streets are very narrow and drove our GPS crazy.  On the way to Nimes we saw the Pont du Gard (impressive) and the village of Uzez which was very impressive and has a great restaurant The Bistrot du Grezac.

Our final stop was the Royal Cottage in Cassis.  Finally we had some great weather.  We did the boat trip to the Calanques but otherwise had two great lunches at La Bada which a terrific restaurant on the beach.  Cassis has a terrific ambiance and people watching at a beachside cafe for both breakfast and evening hot chocolate and cognac takes a lot of beating.

We flew out of Nice airport on Emirates on 13 June.  The air traffic controllers were on strike – every day on the French news some group was on strike – yet somehow we left on time at 4pm.  Some poor people had been there since 6am and had no idea when their plane was arriving let alone leaving.  Goodness knows what Emirates management paid the union leaders.  We flew back to Sydney from Dubai on a 380 which has business class section that has to be seen.  I think there are 76 seats and at the rear end there is lounge bar. 

Summing up the wettest winter I ever spent was spring in Europe 2013.

My favourite comment from the reunions was a discussion about what advice you would give you children.  Charlie Penwill said “Save and invest.”  This is equivalent to Warren Buffet’s comment that you should never underestimate the power of compound interest and the more I thought about it during our travels the more I reflected how important it is.

Chris Golis Australia's expert on practical emotional intelligence
website: www.emotionalintelligencecourse.com
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgolis
mobile: +61-418-222219

Italy-France September 2012

We arrived in Milan on Tuesday morning Aug 22.  For lunch we went to a recommended restaurant only to see the sign (which we saw repeatedly over the next 3 days) chiuso per la feria or closed for the holidays.  On the other hand our hotel, The Bruneshelli was brilliantly located next to the Duomo.  We did a city tour on Wednesday culminating in a viewing of the Last Supper.  Dan Brown was right it does look like a woman to the left hand side of Christ.  As the only restaurants that were open were in the Galleria Victor Emmanuel that is where ate most of the time.  On Thursday we did the tour of the golden quadrilateral where all the fashion houses are located.  Well worth a visit given the importance of fashion in our culture.  I also bought a Tom-Tom which proved invaluable.

Friday we hired a car and drove to Verona.  We stayed at the Anfitheatro BandB which is conveniently located next to the Arena.  We saw Carmen and it was an amazing experience.  The chorus must have been over 200 people and the stage at least 8 times that of the Sydney Opera House.  They had horses cantering around on the stage. It started at 9 and finished at 1am.  As we and the other 20,000 people streamed out we were so glad we were only 5 minutes away from a bed.

The next week we stayed in a villa near San Casiciano with Ann, Anthony, Jan and Peter.  One would not call the village attractive but the villa (other than the access) certainly was.  We had a great time visiting Sienna, Greve, San Gimiagno, and Florence.  We had two good dinners at in the village at Cinque de Vino and Nello but then the day generally comprised a visit to a town, lunch and then return for an evening meal in the villa.  In Sienna I saw the head and thumb of St Catherine who is revered in Italy because she pursuaded the Pope to return to Italy from France and the 57 floor marbles in the Duomo which are only on show for 6 weeks of the year.  In Florence we went and saw the Fra Angeleco paintings at San Marco and then a great lunch at the Golden View restaurant which overlooks the Ponte Vecchio.  We also went to Greve, home of Chianti (where as the waiter was pouring a Chianti Ann loudly proclaimed that Chianti wine was rubbish) and a great butcher and finally San Gimigano where we ended up having lunch at the DiVinorum which has great views over Tuscany.  The funniest moment of the week was as the dinner was finishing on the first night.  We had a Bengali waiter and Peter Arnold wanted a taxi back to the villa.  The waiter said that taxis were few and he had a friend who would drive them.  He came and the three left.  Five minutes later he reappeared saying they did not know where to go.  Luckily I had loaded my new Tom-Tom the villa as the Home Address and we are able to guide us all back.

We then moved to St Jennett in Provence which is up in the hills behind Nice.  The views of the villa we stayed at were spectacular and the access again a tricky rutted path.  This time we had Vivienne's sister, Virginia and her husband Pierre staying with us.  We had two dinners in St Jeannet, the first at the Chante Grille was excellent, the second at St Barbe was probably the most expensive and worst meal of the holiday.  Again we could have been lost going back to the villa but remembering what had happened in San Casiciano, I had reset the home address and we got back to the villa.  Vence, Tourettes-sur-Loup and Gourdon were great villages in the mountains, St Paul de Vence was quite rightly described by our housekeeper as Disneyland.  We went to Nice, finally found the Matisse Museum which led us attending the Matisse Chapel in Vence.  I must confess while I liked his pre-WWI paintings I found his late work (mainly scissor cut outs pretty simplistic).  We also went to Cannes to visit relatives of Pierre and had a great lunch at La Napoule.  In Gourdon we ate at Le Grande Homme which was aksi excellent.

Our final meal together was at L'Amial at Sante Maxime as we were both driving west.  On Trip Advisor someone had rated the restaurant very poorly because when they asked for two vegitarian meals in a group of 4 the manager physically threw them out.  We however meekly asked for the Plat du Jour and had a great meal.

We then moved onto the Pavilion at Pampelonne at St Tropez.  This is a great place to stay and highly recommended.  The owners are English and on Monday night they throw a great BBQ.  Our first night we ate in Ramatuelle at La Farigoulette and had a great meal.  But we were the first people to sit down and were served reasonably promptly.  Other later arriving couples were still waiting for their first course as we paid our bill.  The other great meal was La Pesquiere in St. Tropez at Le Ponche bay.  This is set back from the port in the old village and was great value.  Vivienne liked the nature around St. Tropez and on our final full day we drove around the hills in Gassin and Cavalaire finishing at Le Mignon restaurant on Pampelonne Beach   It is on the southern tip of the beach and not nearly as glitzy as some of the other locations nearer to St. Tropez.  The money in this area is extraordinary.   Ferraris abound,  Porshes are common place and there must have been at least 20 $100 million stinkboats moored at the port.  Now I know what if feels to be one of the 99%.

We then returned to Italy.  We spent three nights at Santa Margherita Ligure which is a great place to visit.  It is on the Italian coast about 30 minutes south of Genoa.  It has a great atmosphere and you can catch boats to Portofino and Cinqueterre.  We stayed at the Santa Margherita Palace which is a brand new hotel done with Italian style set back 5 minutes from the beach.  We had probably the best meals of the holiday at Le Nostromo, Aqua Pazza and Oca Blanca.  The first was #1 in Trip Advisor and booked out every night.
The owner recommended the other two restaurants and while not quite in the same league as Le Nostromo were certainly not far from it.  In all three cases the food was excellent and the wine chosen by the owner superb value (we generally paid around 20 euros a bottle.)  Cinqueterre gets all the raves but I would stay in Santa Margherita if I was going to this area.

Our next stop was Bellagio on Lake Como.  Another fantastic place.  Drive up to Bellagio via Lecco and then going back catch the ferry across and drive down through Tremezzo.  We did ferry trips to the Villa Carlotta (excellent) and Como (we arrived at lunchtime and the Duomo was shut).  You could give Como a miss but on the drive back to Milan we stopped at the Villa del Balbianello which has to be seen to be believed.  We stayed at the Hotel de Lac which is conveniently located at the Ferry Terminal.  We typically had a late lunch at the Hotel de Lac people watching and then went to a wine bar for a single course meal.
We had two great meals at the Enoteca Cava Turacciola and Apertivo et Al.  On our final night we ate on the terrace at Hotel de Lac.  This is another place to put on your bucket list.

Finally we returned to Milan.  We went to La Scala to see a ballet, Eugene Onegin which was unbelievable.
La Scala is very simple outside but unbelievably sumptuous on the inside and the people watching during the intermissions was great.  The next day we visited the Pinotecca which was very good and unlike say the Uffizi  in Florence there was no queuing.  It is a very good art gallery.  That night we went to Le Navigli area and ate at the Osteria La Vigne, top of the Lonely Planet recommendation and a good meal.

In conclusion we ate well, the A$ kept up its remarkable strength so we felt we were getting value for money everywhere we ate and stayed.  I dread to think what the places we visited would be like in July and August but as most of holiday was in September the crowds were manageable.  I sort of feel I now have Italy out of my system but it is one of the great places for Australians to go for a holiday.

The other big change is how much technology has changed solo travelling.  A GPS system is invaluable and mine cost 139 euro which is a lot cheaper then renting one and also more likely to have up to date maps.  A Kindle means you do not have to lug a pile of books around.  I read 5 e-books while on holiday including Hilary Mantel's 900 page epic A Place of Greater Safety.  Finally we took an Ipad with us.  While not very good for entering data an Ipad is great for reading it.  Instead of going to the well-worn copy of Lonely Planet I found that increasingly we would look up Trip Advisor and 10 Things to Do ... when visiting a new town.


Chris Golis Australia's expert on practical emotional intelligence
website: www.emotionalintelligencecourse.com mobile: +61-418-222219