Any hopeful stage 4 storries

Welcome and so very sorry you had to find your way here.

I am a stage 4 story. Gleason 9 (5+4) - Clinical stage: IVB (cT3a, cN1, cM1c) to be exact. Lymph system and bone (spine) metastasis. Diagnosed May 2025. Still here today and looking forward to tomorrow. Life with prostate cancer is different, not over. You'll meet folks here with decades of PCa stories. Hang in there, learn as much as you can. When is your next Dr. visit?
https://cdn.prod-carehubs.net/n1/748e8fe697af5de8/uploads/2025/03/Prostate-cancer-abbreviations-terms.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/@ThePCRI/videos

@mjp0512 we have a urologist appointment tomorrow. The first after the Petscan results. Hoping treatment options will be discussed and or set in motion.

@mjp0512 And thank you so much for the kind reply, links and information!

Prostate cancer is a chronic disease for almost all of us not a deadly disease.

A 3+4 is very slow growing. I’m a 4+3, Had surgery in 2010 and radiation when it came back in 2014. It came back three more times because I have a genetic problem of BRCA2, Which makes it very aggressive.. I’ve had metastasis on my spine zapped. The drugs we have today work really well and they’re coming out with new things all the time.

I know somebody that had 15 bone metastasis and had them all zapped. Still around many years later.

Your husband’s cancer is very treatable.

@jeffmarc thank you so much for your reply, and hopefully words!

There are many inspiring and encouraging stories here - you can use search field in upper left corner above thread listing 💗. I have one favorite that I copied and saved in my files that I read occasionally when I need to "correct" my prospective. My husband is not stage 4 but he has high risk cancer so I panic, never the less. Hope it helps 🤗

So here is the saved post :

" jmacllm | @jmacllm | Aug 13, 2024
It is not futile. My father had stage 4 at age 65. He is 85 now. He's had radiation, chemo, hormone therapy, and nuclear medicine over the course of 20 years. Some of it sucked, but he stayed focused, exercised, and ate well. The exercise was particularly good for his body and his emotional state. It's not over for you. Just keep up the fighting spirit."

I was diagnosed with stage 3 in Nov 2020, & had a RALRP in Feb 2021.

Some cancer escaped to lymph glands, & so I was diagnosed with stage 4 in Nov 2021.

I was then put on hormone therapy. Side effects are mild. In 2023 I moved to another state (I had a moving company move the big stuff).

I'm living a normal healthy life five years later at 81. I mow my own lawn & walk 1.5 miles a day when the weather permits.

Recently I went handgun target shooting with a neighbor that was an Air Force criminal investigator & was trained at the Air Force equivalent of the FBI's Academy in Quantico, Virginia. He's 20 years younger & I handily out-shot him.

So, I'm not dead yet!

@readandlearn Thank you for you uplifting words!

yes, there is plenty of hope. I assume hubby will be put on ADT therapy and prob some radiation plan. As jeff marchi ( resident PS guru here) stated, your husband's PC is treatable and probably survivable long term. Recall Joe Biden's case over 1 year ago: Gleason 9 with bone metas..somewhat widespread I think. And last I read, he was doing well. Joe is well into 80's I believe. SO take heart- you are not alone...many survivors here and elsewhere ! Good luck !

It's normal to be frightened right now, but things have changed a lot in recent years.

I was diagnosed with de-novo bone-metastatic prostate cancer like your husband's in 2021. Since they were using outdated SEER survival data (back then, mostly collected before the latest treatments became available), they told me I had 3–5 years to live — maybe 7 at a stretch, since I was only 56 and had been healthy — and that my initial treatments would stop working in 18-24 months, when we'd need to start escalating.

So here I am now, planning a party for my 5th cancer-versary on 6 October: the 5 year mark with no evidence of disease is when I'm officially in durable, deep remission. My family doctor tells me to plan for old age, and worries more about my blood sugar and mild hypertension than my cancer.

I've already lived long enough to see my younger daughter get her Ph.D. (she had started a few weeks before my diagnosis), play guitar at her wedding, meet my first grandchild, and many other life events I thought I was going to miss. I've also recovered mobility after spending 3.5 months paralysed in a hospital bed in 2021–22 (the lesion grew fast enough to compress my spinal cord). I can walk, cycle, carry my grandson, and even help my son-in-law move boxes, a far cry from when my only movement below my ribs in October 2021 was wiggling my right baby toe about 2mm (with huge concentration).

Obviously, not all outcomes are like mine, but researchers are increasingly looking at metastatic prostate cancer as a chronic disease they can control into old age, like diabetes or Parkinson's, rather than a terminal one. Here's an article from 2024 (there have been even more advances since then):
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/treating-prostate-cancer-at-any-stage/
But perhaps the most hopeful thing is to notice how many of us here on the forum with stage 4 prostate cancer keep on posting, year after year after year until you get tired of us. 🙂