Radiation instead of removal (surgery delayed due to illness)

Posted by robo45vt @robo45vt, Mar 4 1:12pm

I had to cancel my RP prostate surgery do to a cold. The doctors would not put me under with a cold. I have rescheduled for September. I was low risk and told it was ok to postpone. Just wonder more about photon radiation treatment. Do you get incontenance from radiation? If you are Gleason 3+3 can you get 20 low dose treatments instead of 5 higher dose treatments? Radiation doctor told me the cure rate was the same as removal. Are the after effects less with the higher treatments? Do you have to take hormones when getting radiation treatment? Now that I have time going to schedule another meeting with radiation doctor. What are some of the after effects of radiation and for how long? Where I live they don’t offer proton, just photon. What is the difference?
Thanks
Robo

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marynoelle | @marynoelle | Mar 11 5:16pm

In reply to @robo45vt "Yes still is. Just not keen on catheter or wearing a diaper. Depends on age also..." + (show)

@robo45vt Age 74, Gleason Score of 7. Urologist recommending radiation treatment. No surgery.

spino | @spino | Mar 12 9:04am

What pushed me to surgery was the research urologist who said that he had spent much of his practice dealing with post-radiation recurrence and my intermediate unfavorable diagnosis. I certainly wanted to avoid it going in :-). I am happy with my choice, especially since there was a small positive margin when it was removed. In my mind, that confirmed that I was not "overtreated," although of course given that result I would have liked a little more "overtreatment ;-)"
With radiation, there is no pathology check of this sort on the results as I understand it, so therefore there is more uncertainty. Optimists believe it's great, until it's not. Pessimists believe it's bad, until they've survived 15 years, etc. And we're all faced with somewhat ambiguous PSA tests in the meantime.