Hi@bowmed. I'm a 75-year old married man in Australia who had a radical prostectemomy in 2010 at Royal Melbourne Hospital and didn't have any obvious symptoms at that time that led me to believe I had cancer. No symptoms whatsoever. My pre-operative PSA reading was 57.6 and Gleeson Score 7. Post-operative reading after 3 months was 0.03. Because my cancer had spead to lymph nodes and surriounding tissue, my prognosis was I would not be cancer free after surgery. Underwent radiation therapy in 2015 when my PSA reading was approaching 1.0 which brought it down to 0.15, Since then, my doubling time has been about 12 months. Eighteen months ago my PSA reading was 0.33 and my reading this month is 0.87.
My consulting specialist tells me I've nothing to be worried about and we'll discuss my next treatment options perhaps in the next 6 or 12 months when my PSA has risen to somewhere between 1.5 and 2.0. I presume the only available options I will ever have are ADT (androgen deprivation therapy) or chemo therapy.
I'm a US Citizen who has permanently resides in Australia since 1983. Australia has the best public hospitals and Medicare system that has enabled me to have cancer surgery, radiation treatment and most recently elective hip replacement surgery without cost. I also believe I inherited prostate cancer from my father who also discovered he had it late in life and died from it without affording surgery.
I'm the luckiest cancer survivor alive considering I live in Australia without private health insurance. I also want to say the public hospitals in Melbourne are world-class, staffed with multi-cultural doctors, nurses and other medicos of the highest credentials and expertise. I'm truly reconciled to dying of cancer someday and seek no sympathy knowning I'm being treated by the best in the world who practice cutting edge medicine and know their stuff. Living proof of that, I'm still working in a full-time job, physically active in my professional and persoinal life and praise the long established Australian public health system for extending if not able to save my life.