By Peggy O'Farrell
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Kentucky Lt. Gov. Steve Henry says his diagnosis with prostate cancer is "just a hiccup."

"I feel great. I'm playing basketball and I'm active in sports."

But Henry, a 49-year-old orthopedist, hopes men take his diagnosis as a warning call that they, too, need to be tested for the disease. Henry was diagnosed through a blood test for prostate-specific antigen, a protein that, in elevated amounts, might indicate cancer or inflammation of the prostate, and now he wants state health officials to take an active role in educating men about diagnosing and treating prostate cancer. He took the test as part of a routine physical.

"I pretty much had a physical exam that was negative for almost everything. My cholesterol was low and the triglycerides were low. That's the frustrating part - everything looks good except the prostate cancer. What a shame to have all these positive health findings and then to have something I could have dealt with 10 years ago had I been following my PSA on an annual basis."

He talked about his diagnosis in a phone interview Wednesday, the day before he was scheduled to undergo surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to remove the prostate; he might follow up with radiation or hormone therapy. His doctors believed the cancer had not spread.

Question: It's great that you caught the cancer early. How are you feeling about the surgery?

Answer: The way I personally look at it, and everyone reacts differently, is I want to get on with my life, and I can't until I get some sort of treatment. I want to be aggressive. I want to do everything I possibly can, regardless of the inconvenience or the difficulties now, to make sure that we can exterminate the cancer. ... As a physician, I'm more aggressive when I treat patients and that's the way I'm going as a patient.

DETECTING PROBLEMS

The American Cancer Society recommends that men in good general health be screened for prostate cancer annually starting at age 50 with the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test. The blood test measures levels of a protein produced by the prostate; if levels are too high, it's an indication that the prostate gland is enlarged, either by benign or malignant conditions. Other facts about screening: • The cancer society recommends that African-American men or men with a family history of prostate cancer start getting PSA tests annually at age 45. • Digital rectal exams are also used to detect growths or lumps on the prostate gland. Most experts recommend the DRE after a PSA test indicates elevated protein levels. • There is some debate about the usefulness of PSA screening. The test can detect very small tumors, but there's no indication that detecting malignancies saves lives. Small, slow-growing tumors are unlikely to be life-threatening and fast-growing, and the test won't help men with fast-growing cancer that spreads before being detected. Sources: The American Cancer Society, The National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health.

Q: Do you have a family history of prostate cancer?

A: I do, but what's surprising to me, and I'm a physician, is I'm the youngest male we know of in our family who's had prostate cancer. What I have found is if there's a family history, it seems the sons are developing it much earlier than the fathers developed. It's something you want to have a lot of respect for. We will have a lot of men getting it in their 30s and 40s whose fathers got it in their 60s and 70s. (Henry's father and grandfather both had prostate cancer.)

Q: How long will you be off after the surgery?

A: I'm one of those individuals who does not like to be held down. Physicians are notoriously bad patients. I'm trying to be a good patient. But hopefully in a week, I'll be doing some of my duties. And hopefully I'll be back, physically, in three or four weeks.

Q: What about the state Surgeon General proposal you've been backing?

A: We've been talking about that for quite some time. I put that forth nationally some years ago. Every state should have a person who, when they wake up in the morning, is thinking, what can I do to help health care in Kentucky? What can I do about prostate cancer or breast cancer or smoking?

Q: What kind of education do you think needs to be done for prostate cancer?

A: We need to let men know, one in three of you will get prostate cancer. I'd like to ask, "What's your number?" to every man in Kentucky, and they'd say, what do you mean, and we'd say, "What's your PSA? And if you're 40, why haven't you had your PSA?" These tests are so simple. ... Prostate cancer is not something men want to talk about. But you can get them into the doctor's office to talk about a PSA, a simple little blood test that, depending on your ability to pay, might cost you $30 or nothing at all or maybe $45. I'm a physician and I thought that at age 50, I should start following my PSA. That's old advice. I did it at 49. If I don't know about the danger - if you've got one family member, it's one in three, if you've got two, it's 65 percent and if you've got three, it's 90 percent - what do our citizens know?

The perception is, I don't have to worry about it until I'm 60. That's not true anymore. And the old saying, people don't die of prostate cancer, they die with it - that's not true anymore either.

Q: How is the family (wife Heather French Henry, a former Miss America, and daughters Taylor Augusta, born July 4, and Harper, 2) holding up?

A: I've got a remarkable wife and you just can't keep her down. In politics the attacks come hard and fast and she's done a remarkable job. As for the children, they're so young that hopefully they'll never have to deal with any of this.

E-mail pofarrell@enquirer.com