I am so sorry to hear that.

If you feel like sharing the details (and fully understandable if you don't), you might find others here with similar diagnoses who heard the same thing at first and then had it retracted.

I don't want to hold out false hope, especially because I don't know your details and am not a medical professional in any case — there are definitely still situations when it's time to start making your peace — but "5–7 years" seems to be the standard thing they tell all of us for any stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer diagnosis (that's what they initially told me in 2021, with progression to chemo etc expected within 18–24 months).

But for *some* advanced prostate-cancer situations, things have changed dramatically in the past 5 years or so, with new treatment strategies (including treating stage 4 aggressively with so-called 'curative' rather than palliative intent), the recognition of "oligometastatic " as a separate category, and new miracle drugs like the -lutamides (Apalutamide, Enzalutamide, etc). Not every clinician is up to date on these, so try to get to a multidisciplinary research clinic like an American "Centre of Excellence" or a Canadian "Cancer Centre."

In my case, they're talking about *maybe* 10+ years before progression now, and by then there will probably be even more miracle drugs treatments. I was diagnosed at age 56 and told it was unlikely I'd see 65; now I'm 60 and still in full remission (with the help of cancer drugs), so I'm back to retirement planning, and have a not-entirely-unreasonable hope of dying of old age some day instead of prostate cancer.

YMMV. DM me if you'd like my email or phone to talk more. It's a dark time for you right now, and many of us here have also been through it.