@zmarkv Yes, 100%. Parkinson's, diabetes, and HIV are all likewise incurable, but that doesn't prevent the medical community from *managing* them so that people can often live out the full terms of their natural lives.

With the latest treatments and medications, many advanced prostate cancer cases (especially oligometastatic cases) are either at that point or very close now, but unfortunately not all practioners have shifted their focus yet from short-term palliative care to long-term disease management.

That means we have to advocate for ourselves assertively. I was very sick, post-surgery, paralysed, and in emotional shock when I got my stage 4 diagnosis out of the blue in 2021, but the most important thing I did was tell the oncology team that I was ready to fight, hard. That freed them from any ethical concerns they might have had about giving me harsh, "curative-intent" treatments. They promised to "throw the kitchen sink at it," and they have.

p.s. That doesn't mean a patient is wrong to choose purely palliative care, especially if they're very elderly or have other diseases, but it should be a choice offered to the patient, not a choice made for them.