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← Return to Survivor guilt (?)
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I haven’t experienced survivors guilt.
I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2012, was on active surveillance for 9 years, had proton radiation + ADT in 2021, and now just do periodic PSA tests.
I told my 3 brothers (2 older, 1 younger) about PSA testing when I was diagnosed 12 years ago. None of them took it very seriously.
Then, in August 2024 my older brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died 2-1/2 months later.
My thinking is that people die for a variety of reasons. (“death and taxes.”). No reason to suffer from survivors guilt about that. The best you can do is to appreciate life and keep looking forward. Enjoy life!
(Something that I did look into during my brother’s final days, was the mortality rate of various cancers in men - once diagnosed, what % eventually die of that cancer? Using 2023 data, I created the attached spreadsheet.)
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That's a great spreadsheet, but it combines all prostate cancer cases into a single bucket.
The challenge with PCa is that the vast majority of cases are slow moving (cancers can you die "with" instead of "of"). However, the aggressive minority can be *very* aggressive. If you already know you have the aggressive variety (e.g. it has metastasised or has a Gleason score of 8 or 9) then you're in a different cohort, and that 11.79% no longer applies to you.
The good news (yes, there is good news) is that that's not a death sentence either, like it often was a decade ago. With new treatments like the -lutamides, doublet/triplet therapy, etc., we may actually get the death rate from advanced cancer down to below 12% too in the near future as well. Fingers crossed.
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Pretty cool, Brian…so what the hell are we all worried about??
I always say that I wouldn’t trade my ‘stuff’ for anyone else’s and your spreadsheet really illustrates this point perfectly! Thanks!