43 Days: A Surgeon's Wake up Call

by Thomas Calhoun MD MS FACN FACS

Overview

Black men get prostate cancer more than any other male group—and it is their second leading cause of death. Even so, Dr. Thomas Calhoun was still surprised when he we diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004 after a digital rectal exam that revealed an irregularity not present during his prior annual exam. Calhoun underwent forty-three days of external beam radiation therapy as an outpatient. Throughout this time, he recorded his daily activities, which he describes in this book. As a retired general surgeon from the Washington D.C. area working as a full-time Medical Director in the District of Columbia Department of Health, the author provides a different perspective on what it’s like to be diagnosed with prostate cancer. He presents an overview of the prostate gland as well as methods for diagnosing and treating the disease. He also shares how he leaned on his Roman Catholic faith to sustain himself during this time, even while having to respond to several unusual events in his capacity as Medical Director. The author hopes that any man over age forty-five who reads this book will be evaluated by their physician and urologist to screen for prostate cancer to detect it at an early stage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665557498
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	04/21/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	108
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

The author was born in Marianna, Florida, on October 6, 1932, to Sylvia Barnes, a young unwed colored female. The birth certificate indicates the father was J. R. Borders, whom the author never met. His mother told him years later when he asked who J. R. Borders was, “He was just a friend.” He asked about his name, and she related he was named after his uncle, Tom Calhoun. She said that one evening after returning home from picking cotton, she found me crying and in a soiled diaper with flies all around. The next day, she left with me on a bus for Jacksonville, Florida, to stay with her uncle and aunt, Tom and Luella Calhoun. They had given birth to twins who had died soon after birth and had no other children, so I was given to live with them. It was not uncommon at that time for a child from families with several children to give one of them to a family with few children to help out on the farm. His early training and education were at St. Pius Catholic School in Jacksonville, where he was an altar boy. He was taught by strict Catholic nuns from the Sisters of Saint Joseph and Jesuit priests. He graduated from Florida A&M University in Tallahassee as a second lieutenant in the Reserve Officers Training Corps. He was captain of the tennis team his junior and senior years. After two years in the army and following an honorable discharge, he attended graduate school at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he also taught biology, botany, and parasitology. He graduated from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee in 1963 and interned at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, and completed a residency and fellowship in surgery at Freedmen’s Hospital at Howard University in Washington, DC in 1968. He practiced general and vascular surgery in Washington for thirty years and retired in 2003 to work full time with the Washington, DC, Department of Health as medical director. In October 2001, following the anthrax event in DC, he helped provide prophylactic antibiotics to over 30,000 DC residents. He received a master’s degree as a Scholar Studiorum Superiorum in Bio-Hazardous Threat Agents and Emerging Infectious Diseases from Georgetown University in DC in 2007. He is currently an emeritus clinical associate professor of surgery at Howard University and an emeritus fellow of the American College of Nutrition. He has been married to Shirley Jones from Charleston, West Virginia for fifty-four years, and they had four children: Thomas Junior, Christine, Kathryne, and Maria, who is deceased.