merwether, be glad to discuss anytime. Will be gone most of day today but you can always send me a reply or questions and will be glad to answer as much as I can.

Would not hurt to do a consultation with UFPTI. At that meeting would then give you the recommended treatment their team decided on. Again you can have your medical information sent to them (they will handle consent forms via e-mail).

At consultation you can decide to move forward or seek more opinions on treatments. In addition to consultation I did a visit orientation there where they give you a tour of facility. It is an extremely large facility with 5 different treatment gantry rooms and 5 different teams doing proton radiation treatments from 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

I think if you type in proton radiation centers in Florida the institutes will come up. I know during my consultation they mentioned other centers. There were not many U.S. wide when UFPTI came on line back in 2006. I think the major one back then was a center in California. The books they sent you in your package goes into this. Have you asked for the package from UFPTI? They will send it out immediately and is very helpful.

You will find they are very truthful on differences of proton and photon as both are very good treatments for prostrate cancer. The proton major difference is the ability to control where the beam stops as it dose not pass through entire body like photon. You would still have some side affects like photon had as you are still radiating the prostrate. But for me the pencil beam that I was offered along with the radiation not going past my prostrate gland was something I wanted with the chance to reduce damage to surronding organs and tissues.

I also have a pacemaker/ICD which radiation can affect over many treatments. The pencil beam treatment I got kept the radiation as far away from ICD/Pacemaker as much as possible and I had no problems with ICD/Pacemaker during treatments which was check weekly to see if any damage or "resetting" of ICD/Pacemaker was happening.

Again I love Mayo Clinic. Have been going there since 2006 and their specialist and program are excellent. Just did not have the proton treatments at Jacksonville like they had at Phoenix and Rochester and my primary care doctor (Mayo) recommended I get second opinions and one he recommended was UFPTI. He has some patients with prostrate cancer who chose Mayo and some who chose UFPTI.