Early Diagnosis – How I Beat Cancer

Here’s my story. On July 30th I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Intermediate aggressive. Gleason score 7. Not the slow kind you watch. Not the slow growing kind that most men eventually get. The kind that is growing somewhat aggressively.

19 days later — August 18th — I had surgery.

I am now 100% cancer free!

The only reason that sentence exists is because it was caught in Stage 1. Fully contained inside the prostate. Surgery took the whole organ, and the cancer went with it.

80% of my prostate was already cancer. If I had waited for symptoms, we would be having a different conversation.

The Typical Story

Most people don’t get this version of the story.

Most people get diagnosed when something already hurts, when PSA has been climbing for years and nobody treated it like an emergency, when it’s Stage 3 or Stage 4 and the conversation is about managing, not removing.

That is what happened to my wife. Diagnosed at stage 4.

Mine was Stage 1. Contained. Operable. Done.

It was Gleason 7 — intermediate risk. Not Grade Group 1, the “maybe we just watch it” category. Intermediate means it grows.

Pathology after surgery: about 80% of the gland was already cancer.

When four-fifths of a small organ is tumor, you are not early in the biology. You are early in the calendar. You found it before it punched through the capsule.

That is the difference between “surgery got it all” and years of radiation, hormones, and scans.

I did not beat cancer because I am tough. I beat it because it was still inside one organ when we took that organ out.

Life Priorities

I drive a ten-year-old car. I spend a lot of money on my health. Those two facts are related.

Last year I posted a video about Fountain Life in the United States — intensive testing aimed at finding the major diseases people die from before those diseases announce themselves.

I treat health like a mortgage: the bill you do not skip.

Cancer does not care that you “feel fine.” Early cancer often has no symptom worth bragging about. Stage 1 versus Stage 3 is timing, not character.

For me, everything is optional. Health isn’t.

Health is the only asset you can’t replace.

What “Early Diagnosis” Actually Meant for Me

Aggressive testing.
July 30: diagnosed. Gleason 7. Intermediate aggressive.
August 18: surgery.
Contained. Clear. Cancer gone with the gland.

Nineteen days only works if you are doing early diagnosis testing, have a diagnostic relationship, and you do not spend three months “thinking about it.”

Find it while it is still a local problem. After it is systemic, this is not the video you get to make.

The 4 Horsemen of Chronic Disease

Fountain Life’s premise — the one I used last year — is that the four categories that kill most people can often be seen years early: cancer, heart disease, metabolic disease like diabetes, and brain disease like dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Canada’s death list matches that. Cancer is number one — about one in four deaths. Heart is number two. Dementia, if you count it the way families live it, would sit third — more than 27,000 deaths in 2024. Diabetes is in the top ten.

Their claim is not immortality. It is that intensive testing — imaging, blood, genetics, metabolic markers, cognition — pulls those problems into the window where medicine still has options.

For the most part, these 4 diseases can be detected early today.

For the most part, they can be effectively treated if diagnosed early.

Cancer inside one organ: surgery. Cancer after it leaves: a life with chemo & radiation.

Calcium score before the first heart attack: prevention. After: rehab.

Prediabetes: often reversible. End-stage diabetes: blindness, limb amputation or kidney failure.

Brain change while memory is mostly intact: years of levers. Brain change after power of attorney: much less.

Honest limit: not every cancer is visible early. Not every scan is free of risk. Not every finding should be treated. Overtreatment is real.

The other limit is also real: a system that waits for symptoms, plus a population that skips the doctor, the refill, and the screen, will keep producing late diagnoses.

The Canadian & Early Detection Gap

Canadian health care is decent at treating you once you are already sick. It’s sick care, not health care.

It is much weaker at the job that saved me: finding disease while it is still small.

Walk-ins, ERs, and specialists are built around symptoms. Early cancer often has none. Early heart disease often has none. Prediabetes often has none. Early Alzheimer’s often has none.

If you wait for the system to tap you on the shoulder, you are waiting for late-stage language.

The first gap is basic: many people do not even have a doctor.

Statistics Canada: roughly one in five adults do not have a doctor — on the order of 5.7 million adults, plus hundreds of thousands of kids.

Canada has also ranked last among peer countries on “do you have a regular doctor or place of care.” Of people with no provider, many already have a chronic condition or take prescriptions. There is nobody to renew them with.

Regular visits dropped too. The share of adults who don’t regularly consult a GP is about 31%. You cannot screen what you never see.

Then prescriptions. Canada covers the hospital better than the pill bottle. About 1 in 10 people who were prescribed a medication delayed a refill or skipped doses because of cost. That is before you count the quieter version: the man who never goes back, so the refill never happens.

Then the screening we already know works — and still skip.

Statistics Canada: only 49% of people aged 50–74 had a recent fecal test or sigmoidoscopy for colorectal cancer. That means a huge share of the target age group is not in the early-detection lane for a cancer we can often catch before it kills. Pap tests among women 25–69 fell from 74% to 69%. Common reasons for skipping: “didn’t think it was necessary,” “the doctor never brought it up,” “no time,” and “no regular provider.” Mammograms are a bit better — done by about 79% of women 50–74.

Prostate is worse by design. The federal prevention task force has recommended against routine PSA screening since 2014. Canadian research then found Stage 4 prostate cancer up about 50% in men 50–74 after the anti-screening era – and more than that in older men. That is the cost of being more afraid of over-diagnosis than of silent spread.

Metabolic disease is the same pattern. Diabetes Canada wants adults age 40+ tested at least every three years. An Alberta study found men in their 40s were far less likely than women to get that screen — about 58% of men 40–45 versus 73% of women. Men were more likely to have the disease when they finally were tested. High blood pressure is common in about one in four Canadian adults; a large slice of people with no other “label” still don’t know they have it. You only find that on a cuff, not on a feeling.

StatsCan on outcomes: men die before age 75 from preventable or timely-treatable causes at a much higher rate than women. That is not toughness. That is missed visits, missed bloodwork, missed refills, missed screens.

I am the other side of those graphs. Gleason 7. 80% of the gland was cancer. Still Stage 1. Still contained. August 18. Gone with the organ.

That is what happens when detection is a project, not an accident.

Don’t Die from Something Stupid

This is the motto of the book “Longevity Guidebook” by Peter Diamandis, the founder of Fountain Life. “Something stupid” is not just risky activities like sky diving or motorcycles. It includes dying from a disease that we can diagnose early and treat effectively today.

If I had waited until I had symptoms, I would have died of something stupid.

I drive a 10-year-old car, but I spend a lot on my health and early detection. I consider it cheap compared with cancer at Stage 3 or 4. Find it while it is small. Health is my priority #1.

Do not wait for Canada to invent a perfect early-detection program. Use what exists.

If you have no family doctor, get on a list and use a nurse practitioner, a walk-in that will do bloodwork, a virtual clinic that will renew and order labs — whatever legally gets you a file and a baseline. One in five adults has no regular provider. Do not be the sixth.

If you have a doctor, book the visit you have been postponing. Ask for the basics out loud: blood pressure, A1C or glucose, lipids, and — if you are a man with years of life ahead — a real PSA conversation, not a shrug. Bring last year’s labs so someone can see change.

If you have a prescription, fill it. If cost is the issue, say so — pharmacies and provinces have options. If the issue is that you never went back, that is the gap that does not show up as a “cost study.” It just shows up as Stage 4.

If you are age 50 to 74, do the colorectal kit. Half of that age group still isn’t in the recent-test column. It is a stool sample, not heroism.

If Fountain Life or another intensive workup is in reach, use it. I highly recommend them. If it is not, you have options. Public screening plus a yearly set of labs is still how most early disease is found.

Watch my last year’s Fountain Life video for the stack I use. Then do the unglamorous thing this week: doctor, blood, screen, refill.

July 30: diagnosed.
August 18: surgery.
Now: 100% cancer free! Because the prostate is gone and the cancer had not spread.

Early detection is how I beat cancer.
Prevention and early detection — done on purpose, not when something hurts — is how you stay out of the other three categories.

Make it a life priority. Keep the old car. Or find the time & money your way.

Book the test. That’s it.

Don’t Die from Something Stupid!

Ed