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Lane: Above all, it was always Jackie Gleason for me.

Nearly a decade ago, another Orthodox convert turned priest from Texas, Father Joseph Gleason, moved from America to Borisoglebskiy, a village four hours' drive north of Moscow, with his wife and eight children.

Stage four prostate cancer is a 10 on the Gleason scale, which measures the severity of the disease, with 6 being the lowest score and 10 the highest.

My urologist did a biopsy and confirmed that he found I had a mild-to-medium case, a seven on the Gleason scale, with little spots of cancerous cells throughout the prostate, which meant they had spread, but were not yet fast-growing.

A Gleason score of nine means his illness is classified as "high-grade" and the cancer cells could spread quickly, according to Cancer Research UK.