My perspective - Unless you are at/near end of life or have significant medical issues that will end life "soon", I would never let an incompetent doctor convince me to go with active surveillance. Sure, treatment option are not comfortable to go through, but a doctor shouldn't play on a patient's fear of treatment and convince a PC patient to wait. If PC is found, you need to address the cancer now, not watch it until it metastasizes. I always use the analogy of a train - If you are standing on a train track and hear/see a train coming toward you, do you wait until the last moment to jump off the tracks and hope you don't fall or wait too long? Obviously, no - You take immediate action, carefully assess the situation, and calmly walk off the train tracks to a safe location. You may go left (radiation) or you may go right (radical prostatectomy), with both options being significantly better than waiting for the train to run you over.

It is so sad to see men who wait on treatment, then have treatment years later, only to find the cancer has metastasized. For myself, I was praying my prostate cancer would come back Gleason 3/3. In the end, I had a GS of 4/3 - Treated immediately with a radical prostatectomy and all going good one year out (reason - center of excellence, great doctor/team, grace of God). As all of us know, there is no promise of the PC being gone forever, but immediately treating the cancer gives you the best possible chance of LT survival.

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and happy/healthy new year!

Jump to this post