Knowing ASAP if with recurrence - Your Thoughts, Please!

Hi Rose,
Well, we have been there for sure. You have mentioned several things regarding Jim's condition. Are you being treated at a Center of Excellence? Forgive me if you have already said, I am late to this conversation.
I, too, was frantic at the diagnosis and for 3 years we followed Tom's PSA as it appeared stable. Suddenly, it rocketed. Then we knew.
Tom has had the Decipher, multiple pathology post surgery opinions (Mayo, Hopkisn, UCSF) and everthing else we could find to sort through this journey. You have not reached that point, however, once again, if you have any questions (although no one knows for sure) I can tell you what our situation was/is and how we are pursuing any and all avenues for cure
Keep the faith, Dee

Jim’s doctoring at Mayo Rochester. I’m actually retired from working on Mayo 18th floor in the Endocrinology department. So Mayo is our home clinic/health care. We live just outside of Winona, MN, about a 45 drive from Mayo. You mention great health care institutions. Mayo (Rochester?), John’s Hopkins (where Jim got a second opinion on his biopsy, showing a cribriform morphology) and had a Decipher test with a 0.8 high risk score. His Gleason was 3+4. The cribriform and Decipher make it more worrisome but his surgeon believes he has a good chance of a “cure.” It is disconcerting to know how many have recurrences, though. We initially thought HDR brachytherapy would be a good treatment. But when the decipher score came back high, we decided on surgery, knowing that the entire prostate could then be biopsied.

Sorry that Tom had a recurrence. So I imagine he’s on some sort of treatment again? I really hope all goes well for you two!

You might be overthinking this? When you thought/knew you had (at least) 3+4=7, you were still in the "intermediate favorable" category and you could consider radiation or other forms of ablation (using other ways to "zap" certain areas). But, like me, you got news that things are (likely) worse. In my case that was a second node of concern on a repeat MRI and two 4+3=7 on biopsy.
At that point, I no longer qualified for the (new form of) ablation clinical trial and I was advised that RP was a preferable next step for all the reasons that have been discussed. (The research urologist said he had treated a lot of post-brachy recurrence in his own practice and he felt I was not a good candidate for that with my diagnostic indicators.) This was confirmed when the RP revealed positive margins and some more advanced cancer cells in the prostate. I felt bad about losing options before the RP, but mostly bad knowing my cancer was more advanced than I had hoped.
Now I'm in the waiting for BCR stage not quite two years after RP. In this case, I'm glad I'm still waiting, but disappointed the latest uPSA was higher than previous ones. I prefer sober reflection to flights of optimism, but I can guarantee that others experiences will differ in that regard :-).

@spino I am new to this forum. How has your PSA trended since these posts early in the year? Have you recurred? Thanks for any info with your story.

Manute

Still waiting :-). Next test in October. Last usPSA was .016 from LabCorp (Roche assay)