No idea if this applies to the OP's situation, but there are two old-fashioned views that are both tragically wrong (but unfortunately not entirely eradicated from some of the backwaters the medical community):

❌ Prostate cancer is always a slow-developing disease that you die *with* (in old age) rather than *of*.

❌ Advanced prostate cancer (esp. stage 4) is terminal, and all they can do is keep you comfortable with palliative treatments for your remaining years or months.

So first they tell you there's nothing to worry about, then when the cancer advances, they tell you there's nothing they can do. 🤦

The huge surge in de-novo stage-4 prostate cancer diagnoses in recent years (after the medical community officially abandoned routine PSA screening as "unnecessary") gives the lie to #1. And all the new treatments that have emerged in the past 5–10 years have made metastatic prostate cancer often into a chronic rather than terminal disease: one that you might actually be able to live with into old age with the right treatments (but still something it's much better to avoid than have to treat).

Fortunately, the word is spreading, and those old views are withering: in 2025 it's not just the "Centers of Excellence" that know about the seismic shifts in prostate-cancer treatment, as many have reported here. Just get thee to an oncologist or an oncologic urologist at good research/teaching hospital that's affiliated with a university medical school, and ask questions politely but relentlessly.

(Note: "old-fashioned" isn't always bad; many here in the forum have benefited from early detection through stubborn, old-fashioned family doctors who kept ordering routine annual PSA screening for all male patients over 50, even though the medical authorities in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and elsewhere had ruled it unnecessary.)