The past several years haven’t been easy for John Zahm.
Zahm, 72, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1994, had the gland surgically removed and about five years later thought he was on the verge of another bout with malignancy.
In more recent years spinal stenosis and other back problems have him daily taking medication to control the pain.
“But,” he says with conviction and optimism of a person who has put off a date with the grim reaper, “I’m happy to be here.”
He takes each day as it comes, which includes a struggle to be on his feet more than a few minutes at a time. He has to lean on a shopping cart during visits to the grocery. He tends a small garden, situated near his back door on the west edge of Gas, by watering tomato plants from the comfort of a lawn chair.
There are many other things that most folks take for granted that he no longer can do.
“I’d love to go fishing, but I just can’t,” he said, while enjoying a bowl of homemade ice cream he concocted with an electric machine, which required no more than him stirring the mix and pouring it in.
ZAHM BEGAN cutting hair in Iola in 1963, the second barber in a small shop in the first block of West Street owned by Charlie Reeder.
Over the years he developed a faithful clientele and eventually purchased the shop.
Times were good, hobbies were many — arrowhead hunting was a favorite — and when a urinary infection became a nuisance, Zahm figured its recurrence after a dose of medicine cleared it up for a few weeks was an anomaly.
“I’d never heard of the PSA (blood test),” he said. “I don’t think most guys then had.”
A urologist recommended the test. Zahm, then in his early 50s, should get started with the regimen to establish a base line, with annual follow-ups to see if changes might portend a problem, he was told.
“My first test came back at 8.0,” he recalled. “I don’t think they knew too much about what the range should be then. I was told to come back in a year for another test.”
A year later the PSA (prostate-specific antigen) reading had jumped to 14.0.
