Treatment options with diagnosis at relatively young age.

laserlight said:

surgery
Don, I know what you are going thru. The quality of life has changed, it changed for me the day I was diagnosed with Prostate cancer. After the consultation with my doctor, I opted for surgery as this was the best treatment method for my cancer. The doctor informed me that there is always a chance of this spreading, but if treated early enough the success rate is good ??? Surgery for this cancer is straight forward, but it took me 6 weeks to recover before I could return to work. The cather was not a big issue for me. I had good bladder control, but still had the leaks, this has gotten whole lot better over time. There is an exercise that you do before surgery the will strenghten the muscle group by the prostate. ask your doctor about this. My doctor explained to me that one of the first points that this cancer spreads to is the lymph nodes and the bone. Now part of my surgery he removed the lymph nodes by the prostate and had a pathology ran on them. This came back clean. The pathology report after surgery is very important, make sure to get copy of this. This has been a intense year for me. I had a person at work sum this up as "you have gone thru a life altering event". At this point in time I am thankfull for every day. This past year I have been on a constant 6 week cycle of lab test's and doctor visits. Cancer changes your life. For the most part I am a fighter I donot back down from things. So far this has been one intense battle. Keep up the fight and donot let this drag you down. To this day I have questions about if this cancer has or is spreading and what's going to happen if it comes back. I just live a day at a time now.

Don
You received some great
Don
You received some great advice or suggestions from other members on this forum. Just to add my two cents, currently there are no imaging or lab tests to conclusively determine extra capsular extension(ECE). If your concern is ECE with a GS 7, you would probably have to research some more on ‘open’ vs ‘robotic’. Please do not dismiss 'open' procedures as being outdated or prolonged recovery etc. The basic steps of both procedures are the same. It’s the skill of the Surgeon that is paramount. Nonetheless, if you do find a very caring Robotic Surgeon who doesn't use a 'website' to attract patients, and who has done a few hundreds of procedures on a REGULAR basis over the preceding 8-9 yrs ( not just in the past 5 yrs) with a good track record of success over the years,you might consider that approach. I'm fighting this decision myself.Just to give you some complexity of surgical approach, please read the article and pay special attention to the 'prostatic capsule and fascia'



http://www.urosource.com/fileadmin/European_Urology/Collaborative_Reviews/2010/Walz__coll_rev_PP.pdf


Platinum Priority – Collaborative Review – Prostate Cancer
A Critical Analysis of the Current Knowledge of Surgical Anatomy
Related to Optimization of Cancer Control and Preservation of
Continence and Erection in Candidates for Radical Prostatectomy
Jochen Walz a,*, Arthur L. Burnett b, Anthony J. Costello c, James A. Eastham d, Markus Graefen e,
Bertrand Guillonneau d, Mani Menon f, Francesco Montorsi g, Robert P. Myers h,
Bernardo Rocco i, Arnauld Villers j
a Department of Urology, Institut Paoli-Calmettes Cancer Center, Marseille, France
b James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD, USA
c Department of Urology, University of Melbourne, The Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville, Australia
d Department of Urology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA
e Martini Clinic – Prostate Cancer Center, Hamburg, Germany
f Vattikuti Urology Institute, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI, USA
g Department of Urology, Universita` Vita Salute San Raffaele, Milan, Italy
h Department of Urology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA
i Division of Urology, European Institute of Oncology, Milan, Italy
j Department of Urology, Centre Hospitalier Re´gional Universitaire de Lille, Lille, France