When Cancer Comes Calling: My Journey Into–and Through–Prostate Cancer
David R. Weiss

I’ve been chronicling my prostate cancer journey since my diagnosis in January 2025. You can find the quickest overview in a message I shared at my Unitarian Universalist congregation at the end of November 2025. You can read that message HERE. You can watch a video of me delivering it HERE.

As for the full saga, in August 2025, I wrote these words:

Looking back to my earlier writing about my cancer journey, I might characterize all the posts I wrote from January to June as “Book One: Innocence.” Because those posts, though honest and eloquent, were written before I’d even begun to really understand the cancer I was facing. I was, as yet innocent of the tumult about to swallow me.

This second collection of reflections, arranged around six themes and brewing over seven weeks from late June to early August, might be characterized as “Book Two: Awakening.” Because these pieces reflect a much clearer sense of what I’m actually up against, both in terms of disease risk and treatment options. Still so much to learn, but now I’m awake. It became one long post because I was processing everything all the time, so it never got written up bit by bit. I finally forced myself to sit down and capture it all—and one long post is what came out.

Finally, the posts coming next, as actual treatment begins (starting in September 2025), will form “Book Three: Soundings.” After “sounding”: the practice of regularly checking the depth of water, whether to ascertain safe passage for a boat or to map the unseen floor beneath you. In these future posts, I’ll reflect on my experiences in treatment in real time.

As always, I am writing for my sake—because writing stirs life in me. It is how I fashion meaning out of the ebb and flow of experiences that come my way. But I have learned over the years that my words often carry rich meaning for my readers as well. Frederick Buechner described vocation as the place where a person’s deep joy meets the world’s deep need. Writing is that vocation for me, and so, as always, I am writing also for your sake.

~David, August 2025

Find my first set of blogs (January-June 2025) in a pdf here: When Cancer Comes Calling: Innocence.

Find my second set of blogs (July-August 2025) in a pdf here: When Cancer Comes Calling: Awakening.

My third set (September 2025 and beyond) is under the theme “Soundings.” So far it includes:
#1 Self-Advocacy: Sorry—Not Sorry.
#2 ADT – Making Deals with the Devil.
#3 Courting Kali, Goddess of Destruction.
#4 33 and Me
#5 Nurturing Gratitude