Rick Lamplugh’s book, The Wilds of Cancer, is the only memoir I’ve found about prostate cancer. He shares his thoughts and emotions as he makes every decision from diagnosis through treatments, and what he struggles with along the way. My thanks to Christina Eisenberg for telling me about it.
While I’ve read quite a few memoirs by women about their breast or ovarian cancers, I haven’t found many men who were willing to write even an essay about their prostate cancer, and I think the reason is that prostate cancer hits men where their pride resides.
Rick shares the research that he and his wife Mary did to understand his options, and their decision to go with forty-four sessions of radiation and eighteen months of hormone therapy instead of surgery.
A nature writer of the American West, Rick was diagnosed in his early 70s with an aggressive cancer that had a high risk of metastasizing. He realized he had a problem because of his frequent need to go to the bathroom, and he was having trouble completing hikes he used to be able to do. His PSA level was tested and came back at 25. (Anything above 4 is significant.)
In the beginning, he struggled to accept that the problem was cancer, until more test results came back and when half of the samples in his biopsy were found to have cancer, he could no longer deny its reality. Rick writes of the “emotional darkness of the wilds of cancer,” and shares thoughts of resignation and giving up. He shows Mary how to do his household tasks in case he becomes unable to do them. Every unexpected ache makes him think that something else is going wrong. His humanity, humility, and honesty come through in his writing.
“Meet your bear,” Rick says. Go to the places where you are scared, whether this is mentally, emotionally, or physically. When you have cancer, all three aspects will be challenged.
He revamps his life and puts together a plan to increase his chances of survival that he calls DARE – Diet, Attitude, Rest, Exercise. It’s a daily program he begins to create a hostile environment for the cancer cells and give him the nutrition he needs. Among other changes, he cuts way back on the amount of sugar he consumes each day, and he transitions to a plant-based diet.
I appreciate that Rick goes into nature to think and be renewed, hiking into the mountains and forests for exercise, where he listens to the life of nature going on around him (forest bathing). He worked for a number of years in Yellowstone’s Lamar Buffalo Ranch while living in Gardiner, Montana, and often he describes his journey with cancer in the terms of a hiker, of having guides, and of following the medical trail.
We watch him go through the diagnostic steps as he asks questions of his doctors, from the PSA to CT and bone scans, to the PSMA PET scan that indicates his cancer has not yet spread. One of his sobering notes is about cancer spreading in another man who went through the same treatments but who was not in as good a shape as Rick.
Mary’s support, with her research and encouragement, are vital and unending. Having dealt with cancer herself, she is a good sounding board for Rick and provides a voice of reason. She tells Rick that he will survive this, but he’ll be dealing with it for the rest of his life. This is another hard truth for all of us.
When he tells others that he has prostate cancer, he receives mixed responses that are often lacking, and he expresses a desire to connect to other men who understand what having prostate cancer involves. Besides sharing with others, he also faithfully spends time working through and expressing his thoughts to his paper therapist – his daily journal. With cancer, there is such a continuous onslaught of medical details and decisions that have to be made, as well as the rollercoaster ride of emotions, that keeping a journal helps him remember and work through what is challenging him.
Now that his treatments are two years in the past, he is finding it harder to keep his DARE resolve. Part of this is due to feeling fatigued and unable to exercise as much as he wants. Another reason is, if he is like me, that he no longer has deadlines to meet or tests coming up to motivate him to stay sharp. Also, if you haven’t let yourself eat any dessert for two years, but now that you’re not going to be weighed every month, it’s easy to fall back into the old habit of doing so. Or to take a day off from exercising. Or two.
He was originally told that his cancer had a 50-50 chance of coming back. This was reduced to 30%, and I think it was because he was taking such good care of himself.
Rick urges cancer patients to be their own advocates for medical care and to make sure that medical personnel are giving you the right shots and doing the correct procedure. When they drove to another state to get the crucial PET scan, as the nurses were doing the prep work, he thought to confirm that this was for the PET, and they had him scheduled for the wrong one. He had to stay overnight and come back the next day. Also, listen to your body. If something doesn’t feel right, if your gut tells you that something is wrong, get it checked out.
Every man who is diagnosed with prostate cancer will benefit from reading Rick’s book. His Substack account is https://substack.com/@ricklamplugh (The Wilds of Cancer).
© 2026 Mark Liebenow
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