About the AUTHORS... Bert Gottlieb, Patient & Thomas J. Mawn, M.D.

Bert Gottlieb, Patient

    Most of this author's working life was spent as a writer cum creative director cum producer in the advertising profession. His wallful of industry awards (including several Clios) attest to his creative writing abilities in commercial print, radio and television.

    After counting up the thousands of pages of prose paeans to hundreds of products, and going through the life-altering, mind bending experience of prostate cancer, he figured it was time to try the long form.  This book is the result.

    Bert currently lives and writes in Treasure Island, Florida.

Thomas J. Mawn, M.D.
Diplomat, American Board of Urology
Fellow, American College of Surgeons

    For the last fifteen years, Dr. Mawn has held the position of Chairman of the Department of Urology at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Florida.  He is a past president of the Florida Urological Association, as well as the American Lithrotripsy Society.  For three years, as Captain Mawn, he was on active duty in the Air Force as a flight surgeon, receiving USAF Commendation Medal for service.

    Though retired from clinical practice in '98, he is still consulting on matters urological.  In fact, he is still so involved that, from the year 2000 until 2002, he will be the elected representative to the Board of the Southeastern section of the American Urological Association.

    To list all his honorary chairmanships and other distinguished professional memberships and achievements would take a small book.

    Dr. Tom resides in Tampa, Florida. 

A description of
The Men's Club
How to Lose Your Prostate Without Losing Your Sense of Humor

The plot of "The Men's Club" is simple: the writer discovers he has prostate cancer, has it removed, survives, is left incontinent, but is eventually cured.  End of story.  Except in the telling, which is unusual for this subject.

    "The Men's Club" is told, alternatively, from both the patient's and the doctor's point of view; a chronological, co-authored record of each step taken in the struggle to survive the disease.

    The reason for the both points of view is because there are two sides to every prostate: the side the doctor can initially touch and snip tissue from, and the side that's out of reach, yet irrevocably part of the patient.  So it is with prostate cancer: the doctor on one side of the fray, his patient on the other.   Obviously, for the whole picture, both sides are required.

    The patient casts a spotlight on his over two-year long, life-altering experience in a mainstream take on prostate cancer from the trenches.   Not a clinical overview, as are most books on the subject, "The Men's Club" is at times joyful, touching, profane and uproarious as it relives the physical and emotional rollercoaster prostate cancer engenders.

    Every pain, fear, and debilitating and uplifting moment is exposed within the narrative, yet within it, there's important and sufficient information to take the reader from know-nothing status to well-informed lay person.

    What ground the patient doesn't cover, the doctor does--from his physician's daybook entries of each patient visit, to the hospital records, plus clinical and humane observations on every aspect of this dreaded disease and how the clinician perceives it and copes with it.

    "The Men's Club", despite its grim theme, is designed to be equally engrossing for both sexes.  For doctors, it reveals, perhaps for the first time, what really goes on in a patient's mind and life during the trials that accompany prostate cancer.

    It is a sensitive, at times hilarious and hysterical, but always all-too human, first person account of prostate cancer; a self-help book masquerading as a riveting story; an emotional tech manual overlaid with all the up-to-date data about prostate cancer one has to know to be able to deal with it if and when it surfaces.

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