Former Winnipegger uses humour to encourage prostate exams

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This article was published 19/06/2016 (3387 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Michael Izen has his own version of the old saying that if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry.

Well, Izen would rather laugh than cry. 

These days, the 49-year-old former Winnipegger has plenty of reasons to do both, but he’s made his choice and everyone is invited to LOL with him.

Izen is living with aggressive, Stage 4 prostate cancer with a terminal diagnosis. Though he had surgery to remove his prostate four years ago, he was given the grim news last November that the cancer has moved into his liver. That means maybe a year, maybe not.

“It’s really a weird position to be in but it also means enjoy it (life),” said Izen, who grew up in Winnipeg but now lives in Vancouver where he runs his own labour market analysis company. “I’ve now gone through three-four types of hormone therapy. Now it looks like chemo is next. Every month I go get the new news. In November, they told me that ‘people in your condition last, on average, about a year’. But that depends on how well the subsequent treatments work.”

Michael, who graduated from Kelvin High School and earned an arts degree from the University of Winnipeg, has lived in B.C. since 1990 when he moved to Victoria to take a master’s degree in public administration. He stayed in B.C. and the rest of the family — middle brother Steven, younger brother Jon and parents Barbara, a retired teacher, and Roy, a retired architect — followed over time.

He said he was raised in “a fun family” where there were lots of jokes and plenty of laughter so he decided that was the path that he would take in his fight against cancer. His family, including wife Gina Woolsey and daughter Chloe Woolsey, 23, joined him.

“For other people too, make them laugh so they don’t cry. There are days where I am down but this type of approach, it really helps. It’s like whistling past a grave yard,” Michael said.

His brother Jon, a 45-year-old artist, drew cartoons of Michael at the doctor, emailed the cartoons to him and put the cartoons on Facebook to help lift spirits and spark chuckles. Some cartoons had subject matter that people don’t often talk about, relating to cancer of the prostate.

After his November prognosis, the brothers came up with the idea of producing a book, written by Michael based on his experiences and illustrated with cartoons by Jon and some by their father. They even came up with a cute but furious little mascot with clenched fists, Allan the Angry Prostate. The title of the book is unique: Finger Up The Bum.

“It’s a funny book. It’s honest,” Michael said. “That’s where the title came from. That’s the single most embarrassing thing that often prevents guys from getting checked is they don’t want a finger up the bum. Get over it. Because believe me, you don’t care about that anymore (if you have cancer).”

The message to men everywhere is to get checked. But Michael said he also made the book to help people see that cancer doesn’t have to be just about the “high drama and horrors” of the disease and that a lot of “stupid and funny things” have been happening along the way.

They started a crowdfunding page to help raise money to put together and self-publish the book using a professional company, Page Two Strategies, to guide them. 

On the day four years ago he got his cancer diagnosis, Gina, who he’s been with for 12 years, asked him if he would marry her. They married three weeks later.

“I don’t set my alarm anymore. I still get up early but I go back in the bedroom and my wife and I talk. It might be two minutes, it might be an hour. Maybe it’s just about the shopping list, maybe we’re planning something but we talk until we’re done,” Michael said. “Those moments are magical.”

He said a bucket list does not interest him.

“People ask me, ‘are you going on big trips?’ Well, first of all, I don’t travel well anymore because of all the radiation, I’ve got bathroom issues. And home court advantage is great,” he said laughing. “I’m not looking for ‘extra special.’ I’m looking for the those little moments, like a cup of coffee with friends or family where you end up spending an hour laughing at stupid stuff. The little moments, that’s gold.”

Michael said the project is within $5,000 of its goal, there are incentives for making a pledge, and invited anyone who wants to support them to visit thekickstarter page, their website, their Facebook page or their Twitter account and tweet with #fingerupthebum #prostatecancer #plaidfordad.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca