Prostate diagnosis not a death sentence

BY WENDY ELLIOTT

Kings County Register

Wolfville’s Dick Groot wouldn’t have won a recent travel grant from the Canada Council if prostrate cancer had gotten the better of him.

Groot was a healthy and active 62-year-old academic in The Netherlands when he got his diagnosis. “My first thought was that I’d be dead in a year. My head was reeling.”

Next he jumped on his computer and found himself confused with too much information. In time Groot opted for internal radiation implants and he is in excellent health today.

But his brush with cancer changed Groot. He scaled back his commitments at work, deciding to live every day to the full. That meant seizing on his passion for photography.

In late 2002 he retired and moved to Wolfville, which is closer to his daughter Anna and family in Grand Pre. It wasn’t long before Groot was involved in starting the Kings County Prostate Cancer Support Group. “We meet regularly and offer mutual support,” he says. “We invite speakers in. Some guys are not interested. Some men deal with it, but don’t talk.”

Prostate survivors share a kind of gallows’ humour, Groot has observed. He adds the group has been wonderful for him, but now it needs new members.

In Canada approximately 18,200 men are diagnosed annually with prostate cancer. That is about 26 per cent of the total of prostate, lung and colorectal cancer diagnoses. The urologists at the Valley Hospital in Kentville diagnose between five and eight new patients each month.

Now that the Wolfville-based group is aiming to widen its appeal, they are hosting, along with members of the Wolfville Rotary Club, a 7 p.m. information session for all men over 40 on Tuesday, Jan. 15. “Come and get the facts about how to recognize prostate and treat it,’” says Groot. “It’s at the Acadia Cinema. Dr. Trevor Butler and Dr. David Bell will be speaking, along with three of the guys, Bill O’Brien, Wayne Marriott and me.”

Afterward, he says, those who attend and area bashful about public speaking will have an opportunity to ask questions one-on-one.

Meanwhile the support group meets on the last Wednesday of the month at the Eastern Kings Health Clinic.