This week Time Magazine ran an article that doctors should stop ordering PSA (prostate specific antigen) blood tests for men because they don't do any good.  True, prostate cancer is slow growing and there is something to the old saw, "You don't die of prostate cancer, you die with it." However, in my case a PSA test may have saved my life.  So here, as Paul Harvey would say, is "the rest of the story."  A little over two years ago I had melanoma (the worst skin cancer) in my left cheek.  On leaving the doctor's office after a routine visit he asked "Anything else you want to check?"  I told him I had this little lump on my face that seemed to be getting larger.  (Lesson:  question everything that just doesn't seem right. Everything.)  Biopsy positive, surgery successful, no more melanoma.  The experience was no worse than a root canal and I thought that was the end it.  At my last routine visit about five months ago the routine blood test also included a PSA reading of 9.8 (normal is 4 or below).  Only at that point, after two years of my PSA trending upward did my doctor order a biopsy.  Biopsy positive but early and small.  Easy to handle with a radioactive seed implant.  But...  The prostate radiology oncologist said with a history of melanoma maybe I should have a full body PET scan.  Bingo.  That's when they discovered the esophageal cancer!  Hopefully that can be stopped before it spreads throughout my body.  Here are two cases where doctors had good reason to order tests: a prostate biopsy and a full body PET scan.  Politicians are charging that doctors push up health care costs by ordering too many unnecessary tests.  If these tests on me were not done, next year I might be dead.  Is there a moral to this?  I don't know. What do you think?  It seems that what we firmly believe about medicine today will be negated by some study tomorrow whether it's about how we administer health care or how we deliver it. What if my doctor had said forget about the PSA?  The PSA test did not find my esophageal cancer but led to its discovery.  Is that luck or just good medical practice.  That's "the rest of the story."  I hope the end of the story is "happily ever after."