What would you say on a podcast about PCa?

As others have noted, it is not the good cancer. One stat that surprises most people is prostate cancer deaths in the US are only about 12% lower than Breast cancer.

Here are some of the estimated cancer deaths by type for 2024 or 2025, based on reports from the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute:
Lung and Bronchus: 124,730 deaths
Colorectal: 53,010 deaths
Pancreas: 50,830 deaths (estimated for 2024)
Breast: 42,780 deaths
Liver and Intrahepatic Bile Duct: 30,090 deaths
Leukemia (all types): 23,540 deaths
Prostate: 37,570 deaths (estimated for 2024)

Self-discovery. Love much, act kind, help others, and become your best version. Exercise, all movements matter, think nutrition with every bite, socialize daily, and meditate, prayer, or both. Be caring you will find most people go out of their way to be kind to you once they learn about your aPC.

Same here. Stable PSA, last year was put on 1 year monitoring by Mayo. 8 months later VA did a PSA test on me as part of annual physical and PSA was way up. That started the diagnosis and treatment ball rolling. Gleason 9.

I wholeheartedly agree, especially with comments #1 and #3.

#1 will help a man find his PCa and then have an opportunity to seek s cure.

#3 will help a man keep their radiologist and surgeon on point. Was surprised when my radiation oncologist missed a couple of important factors in my diagnosis. If I hadn't educated myself in advance these factors would have been overlooked and possibly messed me up.

Yes - and PSA tests are cheap too.

I don't understand this reluctance by primary care physicians.

New York Times has an article about this today. The problem seems to be that men won’t go to the doctor unless they’re so sick their wives/girlfriends badger them to go. Doctors these days are limited to about 15 minutes per person for discussions and a lot of times they can’t get to the PSA discussion in time.

Many doctors also don’t require PSA testing. They recommended it but leave it up to men to do it. My wife’s first husband (married 1st time 5 years like me) was a gynecologist who didn’t get tested for many years and died of prostate cancer within a couple of years when he found he had an aggressive case.

I wonder how many men in this forum have aggressive prostate cancer patients only because they wouldn’t see a doctor. I know in my case I go every year and I was getting a PSA test every year since my father died of it.

Yes - I won't dispute the NYT article. That's a very male thing to do. That used to be me until about 15 years ago when I had chronic fatigue for no apparent reason. I was desperate and found a primary care physician who diagnosed me as having hypothyroidism.

Well...the improvement for me was so monumental that it permanently changed my views on routine health check-ups. I became a big fan of routine blood lab work on a wide variety of tests.

Truth is if I hadn't had the hypothyroidism situation 15 years ago, I would have likely proceeded down a different path. There would have been no routine lab tests -- PSA or otherwise -- and my Gleason 4+3=7 situation would have been missed. Too late then...

You need to put your life in the hands of THE BEST urologist that you can find, who has performed at least 2,000 - 3,000 Radical Prostatectomies at a well known, teaching institution or affiliated hospital of 300 - 400 beds minimum. Hopefully those RP surgeries were done using a single-incision DaVinci Robotic-Assisted Radical Prostatectomy. Competence/excellence in knowledge and skill, and outstanding and frequent/thorough communication are paramount. Also, buy the book by Dr. Patrick Walsh: “Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer.” It has all the information your urologist will forget or not want to tell you.

1. Always talk to both a surgeon and a radiation oncologist

2. "Hormone therapy" is a polite way to say "chemical castration" and lasts much longer than whatever the duration the doctor tells you its going to be

3. Don't neglect your mental health

4. Doctors only go over the most common side effects, not some of the lesser-known ones. Be sure you know ALL of them going in so you aren't surprised but remember that not everyone gets every side effect.

Well, lots of good points by the forum.

First and foremost, stay on top of your health. See your doctor, have those labs. For those who have served in the Army it's akin to:

PMCS - Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services
Q-Services (Quarterly)
S- Services (Semi-Annual)

This identifies issues early only so potentially instead of having to replace a transmission, you just do transmission flushes. Same principles with your car.

There is no "good" cancer. That's an oxymoron.

If you are unfortunate enough to join this club then start learning the terms and definitions. Hard to have an intelligent conversation if you don't know what an ARI is...OS, PFS, RPFS, PSADT, PSAV...

Always have a multi-disciplinary team. Besides radiologist, urologist, oncologist, have a cardiologist...,

Become familiar with where to find information - guidelines such as NCCN, AUA and patient centered websites such as PCF, PCRI

Have "rules" for you and your medical team. I've posted them before.

Understand that despite the science behind the guidelines for treatment, they are population based and lag behind data emerging into mainstream clinical practice from clinical trials. The "art" is applying the science to your particular clinical data.

There are a plethora of choices when deciding on treatment. This can lead to paralysis by analysis. There is no single "right" treatment decisions, there a quite a few "good" ones.

If you do not understand the basics of statistics, get busy...things like Bell Curve, Standard Deviation, Sampling Size, Confidence Intervals, Mean, Mode, Average...

Do not underestimate the power of things like attitude, exercise....

If you are comfortable, look up the shared decision making model for you and your medical team.

If you are using a shared decision model with your medical team and somebody is dismissing your I out to the decision., well, firing them is an option.

Finally, statistics....statistically you stand a good chance of being around for awhile, you may have to live with prostate cancer and its side effects but you can live a lot with it!!

Understand the difference between research and what I call literature search and reviews. Truth be told, most of us do the latter, me included!

There are more but I'll stop here.

Kevin