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Acceptance of Prostate Cancer and its side effects

Prostate Cancer | Last Active: Mar 30 4:21pm | Replies (29)

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@ranger44

The more I read on this forum, the more I am leaning towards no treatment of ANY KIND. Radical Prostatectomy is major, life altering surgery with serious life changing quality of life issues, Radiation almost as bad, and hormones and ADT, good God, destroy the man just to keep him alive. I am 70 years old diagnosed 2 months ago with Gleason 4+3= 7 w/ 70% in 6 of 23 cores, 3 cores had Gleason 3+4=7 w/ 40% I had Pirads 4 pm MRI w/ 12 mm lesion ( volume .42cc) my prostate is 50.4 cc so low volume tumor, I had PSMA PET showing nothing outside the prostate, and my Decipher score was 0.38 Low Risk of Metastasis, so it showed 3.4% risk of met at 10 years ans 3.4% risk of mortality at 15 years, average lifespan for men is 82 or less. Granted, that is with standard of care treatment. Risk with no treatment of any king increases your risk 100% so 6.8% big deal, I'll take those odds against ruining my life, I don't even want to have a catheter. I have done tons of research on all forms of treatment, including focal therapy, Hifu, Brachytherapy, Tulsa Pro, Cryotherapy, and they all have side effects. I have also done major research on the Ketogenic diet, intermittent fasting, and foods proven to fight prostste cancer, like cooked tomatos ( Lycopene) watched many You Tube videos with Dr. Thomas Seyfreid, Dr. William Li ( food as medecine) Dr. Ken Berry and many others. Glucose feeds the cancer cells, so eliminate all sugar of any kind, vigorous exercise reduses Glutamine which is the other cancer cell fuel, I've been on this one month, lost 13 pounds, feel great, yes it is an extreme regiment and diet for this former carb lover, and food lover, but I'm willing to sacrafice that rather than take a chance of even 10% of lifelong ED or Incontinence and havong to wear a pad or diaper, also some treatments like radiation can damage the Rectum and affect your bowels, I don't care if that's a 2% chance, I'm not taking it. At some point, quality of life is more important to me than seeing how long I can survive. Prostate Cancer is big business, billions of dollars and the medical industrial comples is geared to treat, surgery, radiation, emasculating drugs, you name it, not many doctors recommend diet & exercise to fight low or mid grade cancer. I watched my Dad go thru it, and even if it metastasizes after 10 years, it's not the end of the world, and very few men actually die from prostate cance, look up the ProtecT study in the UK same survival rate at 15 years for intermediate PCa 1/3 of men RP, 1/3 of men Radiation and 1/3 no treatment just Active Surveillance. Think very hard before having any treatment, there is no rush, even the most aggressive form take a while to spread.

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Replies to "The more I read on this forum, the more I am leaning towards no treatment of..."

I was at first encouraged by the ProtecT results, too. But as someone elsewhere has noted, being 15 years out means the treatments that were followed up on are older treatments; current treatments would be expected to yield different results, no?

I remember the feeling trying to decide what to do, but two years later I'm glad I did the RALP, with fairly similar information going in. I'm here because I've continued to learn as I face the journey. It was pretty hard to sort out things in the ten weeks or so between my first mpMRI and the RALP. In those ten weeks I was definitely inclined toward active surveillance or at least focal therapy. I understand better now why I was directed toward RALP in my situation.
While personally I can imagine taking the risk and keeping on going, those close to me were definitely not ready to sign up for a likely shorter lifespan.
On the other hand, my cousin seems to wish he hadn't done the RALP and my uncle, who has a complicating medical condition, has now done active surveillance, ADT, and more, and he would say we each should make our own choice.

In the ProtecT study, 75% of the men in the Active Surveillance group went on to have some form of treatment. So it is not comparing treatments vs no treatment, EVER. What we don't know is how many men will eventually have metastatic disease if they are NEVER treated before they die of something else. I'm sure it's higher than the 9.4% reported in the study for AS. I watched my father suffer and then die from bone metastases 8 years after his radiation for prostate cancer. I would not want to live with that cloud hanging over my head at an unknown percent chance, possibly as high as 50%.

Here is an article which models the projected outcomes of no treatment: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091266/

Radiation doesn’t damage rectum so far as SPACE OARS jelly protects the colon, installed thru perineum prior to RT. A new product on the market. I had RT a year ago, no rectum side effects yet.