Path report & Robotic Surgery - help please?

Leo,

Your choice is good and I believe that the doctor will care about the LN identified in the scan. I hope that RP eliminates the bandit for good and that you tell us about the zeros latter. Just keep checking the PSA and try follow the requirements to recover from the side effects.

Best wishes for the "D" day (today?).

VG 

LeoJ said:

Thank you.  Some time yet,

Thank you.  Some time yet, still being sorted and I will be on the site.

Leo your most recent comment (Sept 3) made me feel guilty about this site generally.  It is true that newcomers routinely feel information overload, and we use "shop talk" too much.   And then beyond that, there are a few regulars who are explicit "fans" or "advocates" for their preferred way of doing things, but I have not seen you receive any commments thus far that are more "booster club" than science.

It seems to me that you are making great progress and are better informed than most starters.  In my own case, I went to a radiation oncologist first, read all about that, really liked the R.O., and was decided on radiation until I met my surgeon. That changed everything. I was more or less back to square one, and continued reading. The more I studied, the less clear it all became.  Eventually I realized that there are no perfect choices, but rather in some sense too many choices.  At some point every man must make his choice and then feel good about it.  The saddest cases are guys who study a lot, eventually make a choice that they are not sure about, and then have negative outcomes. They seem never able later to be ok with the decisions they made.    Do not be them.

As Vasco and I wrote above, if surgery is your decision for the good reasons you listed, then go with it and be thankful forever after, regardless.  There are some objective facotrs that render one therapy suitable for one man but not another. But these cases are less common, and the doctors involved are ordinarily (almost always, I think) honest in handing off a patient to someone else.  An 80 year old man with severe heart disease, for instance, is not going to find a surgeon will do a R.P. him...his surgeon would refer him elsewhere, every time.

Continuing to learn is always a good thing. Online, use only university or medical center sites though, since they are the most objective and honest, with the best writers.  Places like MD Anderson, Sloan Kettering, The Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital -- places like that.  And of course the American Cancer Society. 

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