Well, you’re doing what I did, so I hope you get what I got: Apparent remission. I hope your side effects aren’t as bad as mine were, but even if so they were/are tolerable and continue to improve over time.
Happy news indeed!
That’s a huge relief.
Hoo-RAY!!! Most Excellent!!
You all have helped me immensely.
I thank all of you
Earlier in the thread I said it was a safe bet that you were looking at surgery. The bet wasn’t so safe, after all. I still don’t understand how the docs decide which course to take or recommend and, ultimately, its up to you. The recommendation and your preference aligned and that’s really great. It should certainly ease your mind and that is critical. Good luck with the treatments and, if you don’t mind, let us know how things progress. There’s a better than even chance I’ll be looking at salvage radiation down the road and even though its different, I’d still like hear about it. If you’d rather not, no problem.
Age has a lot to do with it. In my case (mid-50s), the doc said surgery was the safer bet. If I were 10 years older, it might have been radiation, and 20 years older might have been watch and wait.
In my case (which was similar to that of @LH75) outcome data from other prostate cancer cases/patients showed rad/hormone rx was at least as good as radical prostatectomy in extending survival, with fewer complication risks.
Lots of things get taken into account in figuring that out; tumor aggressiveness, tumor genetics, degree of spread or lack of it, age, individual anticipated life expectancy for the patient, overall health status, presence of co-morbidities, and so on and so on.
I went over those details with my urologist, radiation oncologist, and medical oncologist. In addition, I contacted two good friends who were radiation oncologists. Everyone’s consensus was that I could opt for radical prostatectomy if I wanted, but that rad/hormone was most likely the better option. Which fit my desires, frankly.
Now if the cancer had already spread, then there’s no real point in taking out the prostate. Then treatment options are reduced to rad/hormonal/chemo rx, of varied types depending on where it has spread to, and tumor genetics and other factors.
I did not know that age factored in. I am 71. Maybe if I was younger he plan would have gone another way.
That’s how it was explained to me when I was diagnosed at 55: if I were 20 years older, maybe something else would kill me. At 55, this would definitely kill me so I had to deal with it. I could have done radiation or brachytherapy, or hell, nothing. Surgery seemed most surefire to me, so I chose that. Guess what? The cancer came back and I probably have radiation in my future.
Well THAT sucks 
And yeah, age definitely affects the plan; the old “you’ll die WITH it, not OF it” is likelier to apply if you are diagnosed at 70+ than at 55.
My father was an outlier in that, as he did go from the cancer (diagnosed at about 73). My brother was in his late 60s and was offered either surgery, or chemo / rad / hormones; he wasn’t given any strong indicator that one was necessarily better than the other.
Best wishes to all of you going down this journey! And I’m very glad my husband gets his levels checked every year or so.
I just got the results back from my 1 year bloodwork. Over the year since surgery the numbers have been .014, .014, .0124, .014. I wonder what the margin of error on the test is. I’ll ask at my next appointment.
In my case, the radiologist recommended radiation and the surgeon recommended surgery. No surprise there. The urologist fell squarely in the surgery camp. I think what tipped the scale for me was “with surgery we will know the pathology and whether or not we got it all or if it is in lymph nodes”. (They didn’t and it wasn’t). That and the surgeon’s reputation is stellar.
Anything below .02 is noise and considered “undetectable”. You can consider all of those readings as 0.0.
Just chiming in:
One of the main reasons I have been so absent aside from internet driftage is from cancer. I had oral flap surgery Halloween 2022, radiation from December-Feb 2023 and returned to work late February.
I’m clear for now, but the return is the concern for all of us.
I hope you guys will be okay. Willingly returning to radiation treatment when the radiation blisters were covering almost all of the real estate in my mouth so I couldn’t eat, lost 60lbs (rejected the feeding tube like a real man!) and was in a constant opiod fog was the hardest thing I have ever endured, and after it ended I told myself I would never do that again, but I totally would.
Cancer is a weird teacher sometimes. Perspective. The relativity of everything. Its wild thinking completely differently.
It’s very nice to hear from you and I am glad that you are on the other side of this.
I mean, it’s never over. Ever. I’ve been dealing with it since 2017. “remission” is nonsense. Cancer never ever ends. It’s just “managed”. You are never ever on the other side.
I’ve never heard that from any of the many doctors I’ve spoken to. That said, it is a teaching hospital and I don’t think I’ve had the same MD or APN twice in the seven or so post-op telehealth sessions. Its always been, “Not rising is good. We’ll test again in three months” So far, so good. Margins tested positive - “multi-focal” was on the pathology report.
Wait, what? There’s a lowest threshold to any test. Do you think blood tests have infinite lower sensitivity?
I’ve had my prostate removed. There’s a regular PSA test. <=.02 is “undetectable”
If you have no prostate (I do not) this is a different test. This is a “high sensitivity” PSA test. Before surgery I think I had like 12-14 PSA.
I do want to drag Billy Strings into this, since I think you’re both fans: his songs (and I know I am not alone in this regard) will always have a really strong association for me with overcoming alcoholism and liver disease, then this cancer from smoking cigs. IOW his music has touched a lot of people that needed to “get better” in some way (and for me it was in every way), mostly due to the guitar sucking you in first like a tractor beam, then once you get past “Dust In A Baggie” (which many never do-“Eeew, banjos?”) there’s such a lyrical wealth of redemptive, uplifting songs, because that’s what he and his family are-success story addicts.
ETA: three of us, sorry Mike F!
Um, sorry I don’t mean to give you crud, but multi focal? You have a prostate. And you got a biopsy with a diagnosis. I’m really confused here. Thanks.
I suspect “multi-focal” in this context means they found multiple distinct mini-lumps of cancer separated by chunks of good tissue. Each distinct lump is a “foci” from which a larger tumor will eventually grow.
In a sample as small as a biopsy, soon enough they’d all merge into one lump. But a finding of “multi-focal” on something more systemic like a CT scan or MRI of the lower body would suggest distant metastases.