Living with Prostate Cancer: Meet others & introduce yourself

Dave, I’m wondering about your approx. age and whether that was a factor in your decision to go with surgery. I’ve spoken with both a prostate surgeon and a radiation oncologist, trying to understand the trade offs before deciding. I am almost 76, and the surgeon was clear that a majority of men my age chose not to do surgery due to the higher risk of incontinence after surgery. Was that a factor for you? I will decide on surgery or radiation soon and your thoughts (or others who have faced this decision) would be very helpful to me.

Hi Colleen...........Thanks for all the info. FYI my name is Dave. Ronan O'Brien is our cat who my wife named after coming back from Ireland. ....... I did see the October Video by the 2 doctors. I will check out your other links here.
As far as the Radiation, I've talked at length with the Oncologist//Surgeon and the Radiation specialist. At first I thought the radiation sounded great (why take out the prostate if you don't have to) but after talking with the surgeon my wife and I both felt more comfortable with that route. Various takeaways about the side effects, but my main thought is that if you do radiation and it doesn't get all the cancer or it comes back, the doctors are reluctant to do surgery as the next option because the initial radiation can cause complications for later surgery, but if surgery takes place, and cancer comes back somewhere else or or has escaped, then radiation and other modes are still available. I just had a friend go through that who had cancer in another area after surgery and he was able to do the hormone/radiation treatments and it worked great.............

The Oncologist at UVM Medical Center in VT suggested doing the Genomic testing when we went over my biopsy results. They made their own results and then sent the biopsies right out to Genomic people for the advanced results. Unfortunately those results also put me on the more aggressive side. There is also a very good support group here that I've been to a few times, and I don't find anyone pushing any particular procedure or saying that one is better than another. Everyone has a different story.. Some have been dealing with it for years and some are very new. They are all putting their info out about what did or didn't work for them, so information can be accumulated and used or not... The Laser Ablation could be one of the futures for treatment but it's newer and not totally accredited yet.............

@ronan2011, deciding which treatments to do is really tough. I'm bringing @semeon into this discussion as he has had Focal Laser Ablation for prostate cancer and may be able to answer some of your questions.

You can learn more about treatment decision making in these discussions:
- PSA numbers: Questions about new treatments https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/psa-numbers/
- prostate cancer treatment choices https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/prostate-cancer-treatment-choices/
- Prostate Cancer: What treatments did you choose after surgery? https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/prostate-cancer-3/

You may also be interested in this Video Q&A about Prostate Cancer with Dr. Erik Castle and Dr. Scott Cheney – Oct 3, 2019
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/webinar/video-qa-about-prostate-cancer-1/
@stuckonu, that's interesting that in support groups, men tend to rally around or advocate for the procedure that the majority did. Very good to keep in mind when making choices.

Ronan, may I ask why you reluctant about radiation therapy options?

Ronan, I don’t have an answer for you about the procedure however I’d like to ask a couple questions and share something I heard and found to be amazingly true. So 1 will you share where you live? 2 how did you find out about the Genomic testing?
Maybe you live out west or in a large city or a metropolitan area that include a few bigger cities?
I was very quickly disappointed with my VA doctors recommendation because he was suggesting what I considered to be old news and old procedures. Doing my own research I went outside of the area where I lived and had procedures done that he never knew about and he still doesn’t care about them. I’m sorry if my opinions disappoint others but I’m confident in what I found out and to me it is obvious that medicine is dynamic and it is changing/advancing often.
One of the best suggestions I ever received was from the president of a men’s group who advised me, more like warned me about support groups by saying that groups tend to rally around the procedure that the majority did. That same night that he warned me I found that the group I went to all recommended surgery. That’s the last thing that I would do. In fact that’s probably the only thing I would never do.
The other piece of advice that he gave me was to have the Genomic test. It would have been done but they want a biopsy less than 2 years old. I’m a couple of months on the wrong side of that number.
I also think that the future of cancer treatment is in immunotherapy and Spicer
Type in Spicer and 60 minutes if you haven’t heard of it

I found out last November I have Prostate Cancer. I'm considered Intermediate, not dire but need to move along. Have not had any procedures done yet except the PSA tests and a Biopsy but have only a few months of leeway as it is highly recommended I don't wait too much longer. I also had the Genomic testing done which put me above the median stats. I'm not interested in the radiation procedures, but really have no issues with having the surgery done. I was about ready to make the appointment but ran across the Focal Laser Ablation heat treated trials that are being done at Mayo and many other clinics/hospitals around the country. Wondering if anyone has had any experience with the procedure or knowledge to pass along. No one around here seems to know much about it. It has been used on other cancer(s) but is newer to Prostate Cancer. Thanks

@paul805 , Thanks, very interesting procedure.

Thanks for the links. I have zero tricks for the memory loss. Very Frustrating.

Sorry, robotic prostatectomy.

@paul805 I'm new to this forum so forgive me if it's been covered earlier, but what is RP.

Thanks,
Dave