Disc Golf World Championships

The final tally

Advanced Prostate Cancer, David Emerson, Disc Golf World Championships -

Today I finished this years World Disc Golf Championships, what a week it was.

I won’t go on and on with round by round coverage but instead will share the personal goals I had established before play began.

1) Shoot a total score of 360 or better. This was a bit of a stretch and meant that I had to average 60. Turns out I missed by little averaging 62.5 for a total of 375.

2) I wanted to shoot at least one round ‘rated’ 900 or above. A round rating is determined using your score versus all the other players in you division based on some highly complicated formula even I don’t understand fully. I consider this one a success because both yesterday morning and this afternoons rounds were over 900; 911 and 912, respectively.

3) I was trying to shoot par at the woods or ‘Down Under’ course but shot a 4 over 58. This included some terrible putting on my part. I missed 6 putts between 15 and 25 feet.

4) Finally, and most importantly I wanted to have fun and meet some new people – this was not much of goal to set because if I wasn’t having fun, what was the point of playing? Today I played with a most gracious man from Japan and a retired Army veteran from north east Kansas. During the week I played with guys from Tulsa, Austin, west Texas, Seattle, St Joseph Mo and South Dakota. In addition I met many, many other local and visiting players that were just great guys.

Enough for tonight next year the event is somewhere in OH and I have a tee time in the morning!

What is this all about?

David Emerson, Disc Golf World Championships -

It’s going to be a crazy week of disc golf with very few thoughts, worries and concerns about
Prostate Cancer. I will be wearing blue every opportunity I can get in addition to an FLHW hat
as well.

For those of you not familiar with the sport, here’s a little insight into this week:

http://www.pdga.com/videos/kansas-city-worlds-video-coverage-episode-1

Note is the voice over: the largest event in the history of the sport!!

Welcome to my World(s)

Advanced Prostate Cancer, David Emerson, Disc Golf World Championships, Ketokonizol -

Quick health update: I can feel the Keto working, seriously. Up until Tuesday I was experiencing pain where my thigh meets my right hip. While playing disc golf this last weekend I experienced mild pain when planting my front foot, a move that is very important to long drives. Anyway I started Keto Monday night I haven’t touched the Advil since! I even went out a practiced my drives last night with the bro-in-law. The result was absolutely no pain and some rather encouraging drives!
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I’m starting to get a little excited about the Disc Golf World Championships.
Here’s a story from our local Fox affiliate and several links if you want to follow along next week:

Up, up and ?

Abiraterone, Disc Golf World Championships, KC Worlds, Ketokonizol, Provenge, PSA -

We went to the KU Cancer Center this morning for my monthly visit with Dr. V and to receive my monthly Lupron shot. We left with one of those good news/bad news stories.


Good news is they took all the correct samples etc. and we were in and out in just over two hours! No missing vials, missed tests or long waits for the pharmacy. It was efficiency at it’s finest!

On the other hand, my PSA was up, way up. It now stands at 97.04 up from 66.14 last month.
While we did agree to pay less attention to my PSA when we left MD Anderson in April, this climb has me a bit concerned. This is my highest level since September 2006.I did leave with two new prescriptions for Ketoconozale and Hydrocortizone (HDK). This combination is what I took in 2006 when my initial treatment stopped working. It worked for 16 months, then I tried Nilandron, then I did chemo. Going back to Keto + HDK is somewhat of a risk. There is a chance that it might not work at all. We decided to give it one more try before moving on to something more serious and more toxic. We can try DES (very low amounts of estrogen) but want to keep that in reserve and may end up trying that next. Until some of the newer drugs (Provenge and Abiraterone) are either approved or open new trials, my next choice is another round of chemo in combination with some sort of clinical trial.I knew my PSA was going to be higher, I just did not expect it to be such a dramatic increase.

Last month when we met with Dr. V we discussed the option of starting Keto again, as we were aware my PSA level was steadily trending upwards. I’m not sure about all this yet. Mary and I had lunch and I came back to work. My head is swimming right now with many thoughts.

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On another note, the World Disc Golf Championships are being held in Kansas City next week. Nearly 1,000 disc golfers from around the world will be competing in various age groups and divisions. I signed up to play in the ‘Advanced Masters” division. This is for non-professional men over the age of 40. We play one round on Tuesday, two on Wednesday and Thursday and one more on Friday (the leaders play again Saturday).

Several of the guys I play with (who are better than me!) are in the same division and over all about seven of use that play on Saturday’s have entered in various divisions. Here is the website: http://kcworlds.com/

Starting on Tuesday the 28th you can see how I’m doing here: http://pdga.org/tournament-results?TournID=8105 Scroll down to “Advanced Masters” and look for my name, I signed up late so I’m not showing up as registered yet.

I really have no expectations but have set a few goals for myself; I want to post no score higher than the 60’s and finish in the 75th percentile or my division. Us local guys should have a slight advantage playing these courses all the time, but we’ll see if that helps at all! Overall, I just want to have fun, meet some new people and play respectable over the four days.