Great they caught it early. They caught mine early six years ago. Minimally invasive treatment - no hospital stay, didn’t even need any pain meds after, and not trace of it after all this time.
I understand. I had three options, and interviewed the doctors who would have done them. I scienced the hell out of it. I was glad to have a choice. One of the advantages of living in a place where there are lots of options.
The guy who did mine was presented to me as an expert, and he must be since it went so well.
Best of luck, but it sounds like you’re off to a good start on the notso-happy voyage with a good crew and favorable sailing conditions.
I have one addition to the various warnings about the process. This is based on my late wife’s long battle with breast cancer. So not personal experience exactly, but close. To wit:
The pace of events from here forward is quite variable. There will be mad rushes to do various tests, then a long delay to start treatment, often for bureaucratic, not medical reasons, then another long biologically necessary delay to asses the impact or lack from the treatment. Then a new development occurs, followed by a new mad rush. Lather rinse repeat. Emotionally it feels a bit like being on an ambulance ride with wailing sirens that periodically gets stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic and sits there for a real long time, siren still wailing away while your condition is still deteriorating. As someone from a very real-time worklife, I found this excruciating for the first couple of years but eventually became inured to it.
IME since, most (non-prostate) cancer patients and caregivers report similar experiences and feelings. I don’t have direct close experience with prostate cancer treatments or patients to say directly how much this is commonly an issue with them.
I am optimistic that for your case this effect will be minimal. But I bet there will still be some of it. And it will try to drive you nuts. Forewarned is to some degree forearmed.
May I piggy-back with my own good prostate news? I had an MRI with contrast last Wednesday, and the results came through today: No new suspicious target lesions; 2 existing lesions are unchanged since prior MRI (2 years ago). One of those is described as “equivocal” for cancer (PI-RADSv2.1 category 3), but again, no change.
I got this MRI because my PSA has been steadily rising, and then spiked a couple of months ago. My PSA has been rather pesky for at least 15 years, I wish it would settle down. I haven’t had a chance to talk with the doc yet, but I feel confident he is going to recommend we continue with the watch and wait strategy that we have followed since I first started seeing him. Which was because of my PSA rising. Pesky PSA.
Just adding my good wishes to everyone else’s, and yet another anecdote. I don’t know if it will be supportive, but my much older brother was diagnosed with prostate cancer many years ago. To the best of my knowledge, the case was much more advanced and serious than yours appears to be. The only option offered was surgery, with no guarantee of success, depending on how advanced the cancer was. It was a very difficult time for him.
Anyway, the point of the anecdote is that he had the surgery, and it was 100% successful. After many years, the cancer never returned. And that was pretty near a worst-case scenario.
Good news there. If WE’s is like mine, and since it has been caught early, I think it is, there is not much of a rush. I had enough time to interview potential surgeons and make a decision. I had a couple of months IIRC. I think other cancers are much tougher.
Hmm. My understanding is that the Gleason score is the sum of two sample scores, each of which is graded from 1-5. (Specifically the sum of the highest scoring two) I’m guessing there’s a terminology difference, so I don’t want to draw any assumptions. Hopefully some of our more medical friends can clarify.
Ok, yeah..that matches my understanding.
The scale for the total is 1-10, with 10 being the most aggressive. So 7 is worrisome, and does likely fall in the “we need to deal with this” category. The good news is that there are lots of ways to “deal with this”, especially if there is no spreading of the cancer. You’ll likely be in for a bit of a journey, but will come out at the end just fine.