I’m on a Roll

Yesterday, I drove to the doctor for my PSA blood test. I was expecting to wait the usual 15 minutes but to my shock there was not a soul in the waiting room. I checked in and a minute later the blood drawer called me back. Total time from beginning to end: 7 minutes.

I am about to send some US savings bonds in for redemption. For tax purposes, I want to send some in 2026 and the rest in 2027. This will require two notarized redemption forms. I didn’t want to make two trips to the notary so I called the Treasury number on the form and got my second shock of the day. After about five seconds navigating the usual “Press 1 for this and 2 for that” menu, I received the following message: “Your expected wait time is zero seconds.” No way, I thought. Immediately a voice came on the line and a pleasant man greeted me. In less than a minute I had my answer : a notary’s signature is recognized for this purpose for six months. Problem solved.

This morning my phone pinged. My PSA test results were ready, less than 24 hours after my blood was drawn. I went to the doctor’s patient portal which I accessed with my four-digit code (easy peasy) and saw my results. My PSA score is 3.8! That’s normal for someone half my age and the lowest score I’ve had in years. I attribute this medical miracle to two factors. First, as I said in my last post, I stopped riding my upright bike and switched to my recumbent for the last three or four weeks. Also, the day before the test we had torrential rain so I didn’t ride at all. (My wife and I went to see The Odyssey instead.)

When she heard the PSA test result, my wife said that if I want to stay cancer free, I should buy a recumbent trike. I wonder if my health plan will cover it.

Big Nellie and the Great Cancer Dodge

I am about to turn 71 and have so far, knock wood, dodged the Big C, cancer. This assumes that all the screening tests that I have done have been accurate. (A grad school roommate of mine was not so lucky. He had a “clean’ colonoscopy that missed his cancer. It killed him. Irony alert: his professional specialty was health economics.)

So far this year I have been screened for four types of cancer. I celebrated the new year with a colonoscopy. I have a family history of colon cancer so I’ve been having them every few years since I was in my early 40s. The gastroenterologist found and removed some noncancerous polyps. So far so good. See you in 2029, doctor.

I go to the dentist twice per year. He does a thorough visual screening for oral cancer. He looks in my mouth every which way and so far he’s only seen normal tissue. Smile when you say that, mister.

During my youth I routinely had bad sunburns owing to my heritage from the British Islands. Between running and bicycling I have spent thousands of hours under the sun since I turned 22. My skin is a cosmetic disaster. I go to a dermatologist twice a year for skin screenings. My most recent visit resulted in a biopsy. The tissue was noncancerous. Just to be careful, the doctor froze the bejesus out of the tissue near the biopsy site.

Next week I go for my sixth prostate cancer screening blood test. This involves measuring the amount of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in my blood. During a routine test in 2024 at my primary care doctor’s office, my PSA measured above 4 ng/ml which is indicative of a non-zero probability of prostate cancer for people in my age cohort (60 to 70) with a family history of prostate cancer. My doctor sent me to a urologist who has ordered four subsequent PSA tests and an MRI.

The MRI showed that I have an enlarged prostate (not unusual for old men) and no sign of cancer. An enlarged prostate tends to secrete more PSA into the blood. This alone could cause a high, but innocuous PSA level.

PSA levels also increase with age. Having just turned 70, I have entered a new PSA cohort. My threshold for concern is now 6 instead of 4. Being old has its advantages, I suppose.

Doctors hate when their patients introduce some random wisdom from the Internet. As it turns out, I heard from multiple sources online that bicycling can cause a rise in PSA levels. It seems the pressure of the saddle of a conventional bike on the perineum in turn causes pressure on the prostate gland leading to the prostate secreting abnormally high amounts of PSA.

In August 2025, I repeated one PSA test after having taken a couple of days off the bike. There was no change in my PSA level. (A friend of mine did the same and his PSA fell. As they say in med school, your mileage may vary.)

In February of this year, however, I had a more promising result. The weather was bad that I rode recumbent bikes indoors for about a week before the test. Low and behold my PSA level of nearly 6 in November fell to nearly 4. I felt young again.

In anticipation of my PSA test next week, I have been riding my recumbent exclusively for the last few weeks. I am hoping that Big Nellie is just what the doctor ordered.

Carpal Diem

Well, my annual trip on the medical merri-go-round has been interesting. I went to my pprimary care doctor for a referral to a hand surgeon to fix the trigger finger on my right hand.

The hand surgeon gave me a cortisone injection at the base of my middle finger. It appeared to work as expected. Alas, the hand surgeon also asked several questions about my fingers and hand. I told him I have numbness at the tip of my middle finger which I attributed to the removal of a cyst before the pandemic.

He said that wasn’t likely and did a simple diagnostic test and said, “you have carpal tunnel syndrome.” This would explain the general numbness and aching I have been getting in my hand for the last year or so. Occasionally the pain wakes me up.

The doctor gave me a splint (looks like a roller blader’s wrist guard) to wear while sleeping. Off I went to a neurologist for an electromyography (EMG), a systematic test of nerve function. I’ve had one before and it was extremely painful. This time the test wasn’t nearly as bad, only slightly worse than getting a series a static electric charges. More annoying than painful.

The test results essentially confirmed the hand surgeon’s diagnosis. The nerves in both my hands are a little weak but test of the median nerve (the one that sends signals to most of the fingers) came back “NR”. This means “no response.” Derp.

(I asked if this meant the neurologist botched the test. The hand surgeon said that this was not likely. “She’s really good.” That’s the sense I got from the neurologist, too. Dang Doesn’t hurt to ask, I suppose.)

If I do nothing, the numbness and general weakness in my hand is likely to get worse. So I am scheduled for surgery in a couple of weeks. Barring some unforeseen problem, the surgery is likely to last about ten minutes. The doctor will be using a laproscope. This means the surgical incision will be about and inch or so wide. Using the scope, he will cut through a ligament that runs across the base of my hand. The tiny incision should greatly speed my recovery. Assuming nothing goes wrong, I should be good to return to normal activities in a few days. Of course, for me, “normal” means riding my bike. I suspect that I’ll be limited to my recumbent for a while. The doctor said the success rate is about 90 percent. That’s confirmed by all the videos I’ve been watching online.

I had hoped to do a supported, spring tour of the Natchez Trace. Two of the three tours I was looking at have already sold out. The last one is in early April. I will wait until my post-op visit with the surgeon and, with luck, sign up. Otherwise I’ll do it in the fall.

If any of you have had carpal tunnel release syndrome or know someone who did, let me know in the comments.

Getting Well

After my trip to London I was a physical wreck. I think I am starting to get well.

My one-month cold is almost gone. Lord knows my sinuses must be tired of producing so much gunk.

I have had a nasty pain in my upper left arm for more than a year. It’s occasional but extremely painful, like someone is stabbing me. It seems that the shorter stem I put on Little Nellie is helping a lot. I haven’t woken up with a dagger in my arm for a few days. Now that I think about it, the pain went away when I was on my bike tour on The Mule, a bike with a similar reach to the handlebars. (This is not a coincidence; Little Nellie was custom made to mimic the geometry of The Mule.) So, maybe the culprit is the geometry of my Cross Check. Hmmm.

My left hip is still wonky but it’s definitely better. I do two PT exercises specifically for it. Then I do my runners calf stretch. This, for some reason, helps with my lower back. After that comes my mishmash of about 20 yoga and PT exercises. The whole thing took me 30 minutes today. I am going to add some foam roller exercises soon because why be bored shitless when you can torture yourself too!

My left knee is still barking a bit. I use a pillow between my legs when I sleep and this keeps it from aching at night.

For whatever reason my legs no longer feel like concrete. My thighs are still tight, so tight as to completely rule out certain yoga asanas from the book I am using.

I was weighed at the doctor’s office the other day. 218 pounds is way too heavy for me. I spent some time backing up pictures from my laptop to an external hard drive. I saw a picture of me at the 50 States Ride, six months ago. Yep. I done ate too many cookies this Christmas. The added weight probably isn’t helping my legs, hip, and back when I walk 7 or 8 miles in one go either.

Off to bed for this busy boy. I have to get up at dawn to get a CT scan. They will inject me with contrasting dye. It imparts a warm tingly feeling from the top of the head to the groin (I don’t know why I’ve never felt it in my legs) as it spreads through the blood stream.

Too bad this anti-freeze doesn’t linger in the system. I have a 35 mile bike ride to do tomorrow morning.