Daily BrewYahoo! Movember Exclusive: Cancer survivor Ron Telpner on learning to live with the dreaded disease
Ron Telpner says the moment he knew he had cancer — the moment it really clicked and there was no denying it — was the morning after the tumor was removed from his prostate.
It was late May, and he woke up stretched across a hospital bed with a catheter tube snaking under his gown. There was an IV drip in each arm, an oxygen mask on his face and bandages wrapped around his legs. He could feel holes inside of him and his throat wouldn't let him speak after nearly six hours of surgery.
The 62-year-old advertising executive was diagnosed with prostate cancer nearly two years earlier, but it was then, at his most vulnerable moment, that it really sunk in.
"When you wake up you are sort of delirious. I looked around and that's when I realized I really had cancer. Before that it was just an idea," Telpner told Yahoo! Canada News this week.
"You know you have it, but you don't see it. I didn't feel physically sick, I just knew I had cancer and it was like some rust thing eating away at me.
"When I woke and it had been cut out, and I had six holes in my abdomen and I was as sore as Hell. That is when I realized, 'my God, this is what cancer did to me.'"
The Canadian Cancer Society says that 26,500 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2012. Four-thousand men will die of it. On average, 11 Canadian men will die every day from the disease.
The statistics tell the story in black and white. They are just numbers until they represent someone you know; a father, or a brother. Those numbers take new meaning after speaking with a man who not only battled prostate cancer, but learned to live with it.
Ron Telpner is not shy about talking about his uncomfortable and frightening journey. In an extensive interview with Yahoo!, the founder of the BrainStorm Group advertising agency spoke about discovering the cancer in September 2010 and outlined the grueling steps he was forced to take with calmness only hindsight can provide.
The father of two joked about how many people were subjected to the sight of his naked body during his time in hospital. He detailed the process of getting his first biopsy — during which doctors took 18 tissue samples from his prostate via the rectum -- causing more than the "mild discomfort" he was warned to expect.
"The biopsy process itself was horrible. I can't even tell you," he said. "They inserted a camera and whatever else they put up there. I think it was a 28" flat screen TV they put in there."
The humour comes in hindsight. In September 2010, Telpner was a colourful and charismatic Mad Man — an 80-hour-a-week advertising executive rushing to catch airplanes and balancing business meetings with an incessant email stream from his BlackBerry.
On a visit to a doctor in Toronto, Telpner learned he had prostate cancer, and that he should have surgery right away.
At first, he said, he was "too busy" to address the revelation. He kept working, piling on the long, hard hours necessary in the ad industry.
Finally, with the support of his family, he came up with a plan. He didn't want surgery, but he didn't want to wait for the cancer to get worse. Instead, Telpner assumed a strategy he calls active surveillance.
"Instead of watching and waiting I took the approach that I should be active and push back against cancer, to make it stop in its tracks," he said.
Telpner researched prostate cancer, reached out to support groups including Movember, and targeted the causes of cancer. He stopped eating red meat, stopped eating sugar and white flour and cut out hard alcohol. He started taking stress seriously.
"I lived the big life of advertising, and it would be same for anybody who eats fast food dinners in the airport somewhere, and get somewhere and eat again, and don't exercise because you are on the road," Telpner said. "All of that stuff has an effect on you later. It adds up, and it can't help."
Telpner sold his share of the BrainStorm Group and started living a slower, more deliberate lifestyle. He eventually did have his surgery, but his active surveillance had helped him prepare. He knew what to expect, and what the challenges would be after the surgery.
Today, Telpner's condition continues to improve. He is able to exercise again and rides his bicycle. He swims and volunteers his time.
He doesn't believe he beat cancer, saying instead that he is learning to live with it. His life has changed, and so have his priorities. But the stylish, outgoing Mad Man says he is still the same, only better.
"This giant weight lifted from me. I felt lighter in every way. I felt more alert. I just felt different, and I had been given a second change to do more meaningful things."
Telpner says he allows himself a treat once in a white, an occasional side of French fries with dinner or a taste of one of his old favourites.
"Since the surgery I have had a couple of martinis. And they are still damn good."
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