Hello to all, my problems are now beginning.

Thanks for your support, it seems Thursday will never be here.
Colin

A lot will depend on how you feel about living with the cancer, if you are happy to let the lion sleep within, albeit being treated by RT or Brachy therapy that is one thing, if you really don't feel happy sharing your body with a sleeping lion then you can have it taken away.

There are lots of things to consider like the side effects of all the options and what things are most important to you.

AS has only one real side effect and you have just touched on it, but many men chose that option knowing that they will be checked regularly so that action can be taken as soon as it becomes necessary. They usually have plan b ready to launch if it does become necessary.

True AS involves Regular PSA testing DRE and biopsy so make sure that regime is well explained for you.

Generally speaking Urologists push surgery and Oncologists Brachy or RT.

One thing to consider is the order of potential treatments and that some may become precluded eg surgery is not commonly allowed after RT etc.

Good idea to read up on others experiences but be sure they are in the same diagnosis as yourself.

Read up from the toolkit and now you know exactly what you are dealing with you should be safe to use the internet to research too.

Feel free to ask as many questions as you like on here too there is always someone ready with advice or suggestions.

Best wishes

Xx

Mo

Hi Colin,

If you have been on AS for some time then you will presumably have a series of PSA results, what are they and when did they start? The increase in PSA levels, assuming that you did not engage in activity within 48 hours of the sample being taken that could artificially increase the PSA, is an indicator as to how aggressive your cancer is likely to be. That can only be ascertained for certain in a petri dish on pathology as far as I am aware, but in the absence of that examination the PSA test is all you can go on.

Baer in mind that your Gleason score is a "Guesstimate" at this stage. It can go up or down as a result of pathology exam. Mine went up from 6 to 7. As far as I am aware most scores do tend too be lifted after pathology. Really happy to be corrected on that if I am wrong?

dave

"I'm not sure I can go through The Active surveillance, after having 5 months of it already, and he has booked me in to see a oncologist."

Oh, sorry if I got that wrong, copied the quote and pasted it above, dereggub if I can read it any other way?

Re the upstaging of the Gleason on pathology, I have no stats to prove or disprove my view. Happy, very happy, to be proved wrong.

dave

Thanks all for your comments, I'm finding the toolkit very informative. Still loads to go through. I think a meeting with the oncologist is going to be useful to.

I've noted that if you have radiotherapy you might not be able to have surgery if that fails. I'm making notes as I go through the various options of treatments.

It's interesting to read others stories and treatments.

Some people have told me I'm lucky it's prostate cancer as it can be easily cured, I'm not sure what they know about it, but I certainly don't feel lucky.

Colin

Sorry to hear that the news was as you expected but not as you had hoped.

If it helps, my OH has had surgery to remove prostate. When he was diagnosed, we asked the surgeon what he would do with our set of results. He said he would go for the surgery. It's alswsys worth asking your consultant. They may not answer, but if they do it helps. Post surgery, the consultant said that he considered the decision was justified because the Gleason was 9 at pathology, and it had reached but not exceeded the surgical margin. On his biopsy, he only had 3% in one lobe and 18% in the other.

So the positive is that hopefully it was caught in time, and he is cured.

On the other hand, the side effects of the surgery have been very hard for him to deal with. Six months on he is dry at night but leaks like mad in the day. He can't drink beer. This is the end of life as we know it. He has little or no movement on the erection front, but it's early days. However, he is not a patient man, and is very distressed by it all. The side effects of the surgery were not adequately explained to him before surgery, although he would probably still have had it.

With a Gleason 6, you have the luxury of time to decide. But at the end of the day, you need to go with your gut feeling.

Colin

Can only be your choice but as an alternative to surgery do consider some form of Radiotherapy. I was 58 at diagnosis. Back in 2004 surgery at Gleason 8 was not deemed viable so had RT and HT. I’m 10 years post diagnosis with no incontinence issues but have ED issues

Check my profile.

Ray