Update on my PSA levels and if I have PC or just BPH

Thanks for sharing this, Jayhall. My PSA is also 12 now and has been in the 9-12 range for 10 months. I have a scan booked in November. I'm concerned but hopeful.

A PSMA PET test would show whether there is prostate cancer anywhere in your body. it could be BPH. I know someone who had a PSA of 50 and no cancer. It could also be cancer and the biopsy they did didn’t hit the right spot. The PET scan would rule out prostate cancer.

No one (especially the non-medical-practitioners in this forum) can diagnose you based on PSA alone.

There is a *very* loose rule-of-thumb when you hit a PSA of 10 there's a 50% chance that you have prostate cancer, but don't take it too literally; there are lots of exceptions, special qualifiers (like age), etc. etc. etc. It's just an easy-to-remember guideline to help decide how urgently you need to get additional testing.

With a PSA of 12, I'd suggest that yes, it makes sense to keep going ahead with the testing your doctor recommended. If the tests all come back negative, great! If the tests come back positive, then there's a very strong chance you caught it early enough that it's fully curable, so also great!

Some time ago I was asked about my post about supplements and what radiation does to cancer cells. I again have to state I am not a medical professional and my information comes from my R/O, urologist, PCP, and research. It is that information I refer to not a medical opinion as I am not a medical professional.

I have attached the information on the supplements. It shows two different opinions on supplements. At UFHPTI I was given a handout on this (attached) and given a full explanation by my R/O of why they were asking me to stop taking specific supplements prior to, during, and for 2 weeks after.

I was also asked about my comment on how the radiation works on cancer cells. Again this comes from UFHPTI and my R/O but found same information on prostate cancer centers. The attached explains the radiation treatments damage the cancer cells and they cannot duplicate, heal, or continue to grow. New radiation treatments are indeed directed to specific kill the prosate cancer cells and leaving good cells undamaged.

At UFHPTI my R/O says there is too high a chance of missing cancer cells present in prostate so the treat the entire prostrate. The attached comes from Prostate Cancer Foundation. What my R/O explained to me that radiation damages the structure of cancer cells and they cannot repair, duplicate and thus eventually die. The normal cells of the prostate do have the ability to repair themselves and grow. The below is taken directly from Prosate Cancer Foundation.
What is Radiation Therapy?
Radiation is the strategic use of ionizing radiation or photons to kill cancer cells. It works by damaging the cancer cells’ DNA (the genetic blueprint of the cancer cell).The targeted cells die without growing or replicating themselves. Radiation therapy, like surgery, is very effective at killing localized or locally advanced prostate cancer and has the same cure rate as surgery.

UFHPTI hand out on supplements:

@jayhall there have been a couple of comments about the PSE test on this web site. It is fairly new. I looked into it and contacted the company, Oxford Biodynamics, that makes it, for more information. It is a prostate cancer blood test that checks chromatin patterns and markers along with the psa test. It claims 95%+ accuracy vs 57% with just psa. It also claims it can be used for detecting biological re-occurrence. Here is a link to more information:
https://www.94percent.com/
I did wonder what the relationship was between a biopsy and the chromosome markers, in terms of accuracy.