Jan Zlotnick

 

 

The Prostate Awareness Foundation mourns the loss of our dear friend and comrade Jan Zlotnick, who passed away from advanced prostate cancer on New Year’s Eve.  Jan was a twenty year plus veteran of prostate cancer.  He fought a long and valiant fight against his disease and helped so many of us along his journey. He was a true and loyal friend.

Jan was diagnosed with prostate cancer over twenty years ago and had his prostate removed when he was forty-two years old. He was one of the youngest men to have a radical prostatectomy we know of. Unfortunately it had already spread so he went thru radiation therapy the following summer. Again, unfortunately, it had spread beyond the prostate bed, so Jan next used intermittent, and then constant, Androgen Deprivation Therapy (ADT) as his primary protocol for longer than anyone we are aware of. This strategy is designed to cut off the body’s ability to produce testosterone and slow down disease progression. He was able to keep his cancer from extensively spreading for almost twenty years before developing advanced metastasized prostate cancer at the start of 2013.

Jan taught nursing and developed and taught the first men’s health classes at City College of San Francisco for almost thirty years until his illness forced him into early retirement in 2014. He held Master’s degrees in education and also continued to work per diem shifts throughout much of his forty year career as a nurse.  Jan’s background in science and medicine made him the ideal lead mentor for the PAF. A member of the PAF board of directors, he was the one we turned to when any discussion of pharmaceutical intervention and other conventional protocols came up for discussion. Jan held regular PAF seminars on sexuality and prostate cancer for our Bay Area membership. He always made himself available to men and their families in crisis who were dealing with prostate cancer decisions.

Part of Jan’s personal protocol included regular daily exercise. He was a constant participant in the PAF’s weekly hiking program. He participated in a number of Cancer Climb for Prostate Awareness expeditions and in 2003 he was a member of the Prostate Awareness Foundation team that successfully summited Mt Kilimanjaro, at 19,341’ the highest mountain in Africa. He took great pride in the fact that he was able to accomplish this high altitude summit while on his ADT pharmaceutical testosterone blockade program. As a major side effect of ADT is muscle loss and lethargy.  Jan not only overcame these debilitating side effects but used his nursing skills to administer to those of us suffering from exhaustion, dehydration and altitude sickness.

Our hearts and sincere condolences go out to Jan’s wife Jeanette, his son Quincy, Marilyn his mother and Linda his sister. Jan was a kind and good man, he will be sorely missed.