Prostate cancer

My urologist called me on a Friday night at about 7PM to discuss my results. They sucked and I was with a Genito-Urinary Oncologist the following Tuesday. Funny how appointments open up when all hell breaks loose.
Maybe yours isn't so bad since you didn't get a phone call.
Good Luck! 👍

Stay Strong Brother, We Got This

I saw my biopsy results before meeting with my urologist. Those few days gave me time to understand about Gleason scores, what a 3+3 meant, and to put together a list of questions to ask. By the time we talked, I pretty much knew what he was going to say (and disagreed with him when he wanted to immediately schedule surgery.)

Bring someone with you so that they’ll hear things that you’ll miss, and will ask questions that you overlook.

I was hoping to see my results in my portal, because usually any doctor visit, you usually see your reports before they even read them. The only test result i saw before i saw the doctor was my MRI results, but that was done at a imaging place, and they had a separate portal. Yes, my wife is going with me, for she has been with me every step of the way on this journey.

@mpersonne -- Any chance the lab that examined the biopsy results has a portal you can access? However you do it, you'll want a copy of the biopsy results. As I tried to educate myself after getting my diagnosis I found myself going back to the biopsy report several times to get details on location, etc. Best wishes.

Stage 4, post-radiation on hip and ribs. PSA now zero. Radiation oncologist says he believes I'll live more than 5 years at which point I'll be considered cured. Question: if the tumors have been killed and PSA is unmeasurable, HOW does the cancer reestablish itself? Anyone? Thanks.

@odie10
Prostate cancer can go a dormant. I know one guy with a Gleason nine that had it come back 30 years after his treatment. Another guy had to come back after 20 years. These type of reports aren’t unusual. I go to nine online advanced prostate cancer meetings every month and here many different types of cases.

Mine came back 3 1/2 years after my surgery.

There’s no way to see all of the micro metastasis in someone’s body. The PSMA PET scan can’t see metastasis that are 2 1/2 mm and some doctor say even 5 mm are hard to see.

Once you’ve had it spread to other parts of your body, it’s in your bloodstream. It’s hard to eliminate it from there, There really isn’t any treatment besides chemo or Pluvicto that could do it. Even after those treatments reoccurrences is very common.

@odie10 A couple of days ago, I was listening to this year+ old webinar (https://youtu.be/xZYMTRjKI9U)

It was mentioned that (following primary radiation) “…if a patient has not experienced biochemical recurrence by 5 years, the chance of developing distant metastasis after that (pulling all risk groups together) is only 3%….”

I stopped what I was doing (weightlifting at the gym) and scrolled back to replay and snapshot those words in the transcript. (See attached.)

@jeffmarc These 20- and 30-year numbers aren’t bad.

By comparison, in 1995 I had knee surgery; in 2018 I had a recurrence of that same knee problem and had the same knee surgery again. I consider those 23 years a successful surgery (despite having to repeat it). If I can get 23 more years out of that 2018 knee surgery, that’ll be another successful treatment.

Similarly, if I can get 20-30 years out of my 2021 prostate cancer (proton) radiation treatments, I’ll consider that a success.

@odie10 I meant to add that Stage 4 prostate cancer is considered incurable, yes?