John Peter McBride has spent his life inside operating rooms. 

He was a Navy corpsman in Vietnam, a perfusionist who assisted in more than 12,000 heart surgeries, an entrepreneur who built companies that supplied cardiovascular equipment to more than 100 hospitals, and later a hospital administrator who helped run electrophysiology programs. 

He founded a school at Loma Linda University in 2008 to train allied‑health professionals in cardiac ablation — a field he calls “a booming business because of the aging population.”

At 75, he jokes that he’ll “have to live to 176 to complete 50% of what I want to accomplish.” But six weeks ago, his plans collided with a diagnosis he never saw coming.

“I have terminal metastatic prostate cancer,” he said. “And if I had gotten that PSA test earlier, it could have been a completely different universe.”

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A missed test, a missed chance

McBride’s story begins with a simple blood test — or rather, the absence of one. When the pandemic shut down his consulting work, he turned to the VA for healthcare coverage. He assumed routine screenings were part of the deal. They weren’t.

“Unbeknownst to me, the VA does not do PSA tests,” he said. “They didn’t tell me they weren’t doing it.”

His last PSA test in 2022 showed a slightly elevated level of 4. He asked for another. The VA declined.

“They said, ‘We don’t do it anymore. You guys are older than 70, and everybody over 70 is eventually going to get prostate cancer.’ I said, ‘That’s not what I want to hear.’”

When he finally insisted on the test, the result came back at 26 — a number he didn’t need a doctor to interpret.

“Twenty‑six means you’ve got a bad tumor,” he said. “And it turned out I did.”

Within days, his longtime colleagues at RadNet — a national imaging network — stepped in. “On Sunday I had an MRI. Monday, I had a PET scan. Tuesday, I had a biopsy,” he said. “If I was at the VA, it would be eight or nine months.”

The biopsy confirmed metastatic disease. The cancer had already left the prostate and entered his lymph nodes.

“The difference between non‑metastatic prostate cancer and metastatic prostate cancer is different universes,” he said. “If it’s isolated, it’s virtually 100 percent curable. Once it leaves the prostate, it’s a race.”

The race and the reality

That race begins with hormone therapy — a treatment that starves prostate cancer of testosterone.

“For some reason, the cancer lives off testosterone,” McBride said. “So, they quit feeding it.”

But hormone therapy is not a cure. “It’s an 18‑month start,” he said. “Eventually hormone therapy no longer works. And the side effects are severe. Basically, it’s chemical castration.”

He lists them plainly: weight gain, loss of libido, lethargy, hot flashes “four or five times a day,” and what he calls “male menopause.”

Still, he is determined to push forward. “I wanted to live to 90,” he said. “Now I’m on a race to stop the metastasis as long as I can.”

Get your PSA checked

Dr. David Javidan, medical director of urologic oncology at Cedars‑Sinai, has spent his career diagnosing and treating prostate cancer. He says McBride’s story is not rare — it’s simply preventable.

Prostate cancer detection really begins with screening,” he said. “And screening begins with your primary care physician and a blood test called PSA.”

It is, he emphasizes, one of the simplest tests in medicine.

“If your husband is getting blood work every year, PSA is literally just a checkbox,” he said. “It’s as likely to save his life as any other lab test he’s getting — probably more likely.”

The danger, he said, is that prostate cancer rarely announces itself early.

“If you don’t get your PSA checked and do nothing, you will not present with any clinical symptoms until you have incurable disease,” he said. “By the time you have symptoms, it’s too late to cure you.”

MRI can help problem‑solve abnormal results, but PSA remains the backbone of early detection.

“It’s hard to argue against getting your PSA checked,” he said. “The only argument is that your PSA might be elevated and you don’t have cancer. But that’s still better than finding out you have metastatic disease because you never checked.”

A complicated cancer — and a simple test

Prostate cancer is biologically varied. Some tumors grow so slowly they never threaten a man’s life. Others are aggressive and shorten life expectancy by years. That variability makes screening essential — and tricky.

“It’s among the least aggressive cancers,” Dr. Javidan said. “Even the most aggressive prostate cancer is unlikely to cause death until eight to ten years have passed. But the least aggressive cancers might take 15 or 20 years.”

Age matters. But screening still saves lives.

“It’s equally prevalent to breast cancer,” he said. “We’ve done a great job screening women. We haven’t done as great a job screening men.”

McBride is not angry. He is focused.

“I can cry at the moon all day long,” he said. “What do I do with the information? Try to get the best healthcare I can, live as long as I can, and get the word out.”

He filed a complaint with the VA. They responded — and changed their policy.

“From now on, every single patient will be informed about PSA and other exams,” he said. “That’s what I wanted — informed consent.”

He knows the stakes. “There are 15,000 vets every year diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer because they weren’t doing the PSA test,” he said. “It costs a buck and a half.”

He also knows what he wants his life to add up to.

“If God grants me the opportunity, the last time I close my eyes, I want to think: did I matter?” he said. “Did I do something with my life? If Pete McBride was alive, was the world a little bit better?”

He paused.

“Maybe that’s arrogant,” he said. “But it’s my desire.”