June 29, 2026
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about finishing radiation without getting the clean ending I’d pictured — no bell, no ceremony, just confusion and a closed office door. I said I was hoping for some real answers when Dr. Greenfield got back. This week, I got them.
I walked in with my list of questions and didn’t hold back. I told him directly: I was angry, my trust had taken a hit, and I wanted to understand exactly what happened and why. He didn’t get defensive, and he didn’t make excuses. What follows is the short version of what he told me.
I received 28 radiation sessions at a standard dose, totaling 70 units of radiation — and that is a complete, full-strength curative treatment. Not a discount version. Not a shortcut. As it turns out, the field has moved on since he and I first discussed my treatment plan back in March. Studies have shown that this shorter course produces the same outcome and the same side effect profile as the old 39-session approach. The longer course isn’t standard practice anymore at any reputable center; in his words, anyone still doing 39 sessions today is mostly just running up the bill. He’d learned this at a medical conference shortly after our very first conversation, and the plan changed — he just never circled back and told me it had.
That’s on him, and he said so without hedging. More than once, he simply said, “That’s my fault.”
As for the steroid scare that had me genuinely worried — he clarified that the real danger he’d warned me about applies to patients who take far more steroids than prescribed, over a long stretch, and then stop abruptly. A small, properly tapered dose like mine was never actually a crisis waiting to happen. The warning had been a general caution, not a specific prediction about me.
So where does that leave things? I have a curative dose of radiation behind me. The bleeding has stopped. My steroid taper is finished. Flow is very slowly improving, and only time will relieve the feeling of urinating molten lava. Sleep is still working its way back too — most nights I’m getting three to four hours, with the occasional power nap. I’m hopeful that as the Dexamethasone finishes clearing out of my system, my body will remember how to sleep again, and I’ll get back to something like a normal six-hour night. Hormone therapy continues until September 10th, when I’ll go back for a PSA baseline and start the longer process of monitoring PSA every six months.
I won’t pretend the last few weeks didn’t shake my confidence some. They did. But I’ll say this plainly: Dr. Greenfield sat with my anger instead of arguing, took responsibility instead of deflecting it, and gave me a complete and honest accounting once he had the chance. I then went to the hospital’s records department and got the full documentation of my radiation treatment, so I could verify everything for myself. Between his explanation and my own records, I have closure, assurance, and clear next steps.
Perhaps in a year or two, I’ll be ready to ring the bell.