Searching for Treatment Feedback / Supplements

personally at your young age and at my young age I was 57. I wish to God I took it out. I personally know about six men that have had surgery. All of them are fine. None of them have any incontinence they can still get erection and they are cancer free 678 years later, don’t listen to horror stories. You might hear a lot of them on here. The gold standard for prostate cancer that is confined to the prostate is surgery look it up the; you always have radiation as Plan B if it happened to come back on my case since I already did radiation if it comes back now I’m screwed. I can’t do radiation a second time,… just my opinion.

Hey there sorry you’ re dealing with all this at age 51(or any age for that matter).

I was diagnosed at 58 and had prostate out three months ago at age 59. I was intermediate risk with 3+4 and no 4+3.

your concerns are well received, there is no intervention for this disease that comes without life-changing after effects. I am still leaking urine and do not have erections, however, my expectation is I will recover function, I just have to be patient because recovery can take a year or more. I am tremendously improved today compared to where I was when my catheter was removed one week after surgery.
Whatever you decide, I think it’s really important to consider your specific characteristics of your disease and life expectancy after treatment, things that come to mind from what you have said in your initial message are the following: You are only 51 years of age, you already have 4+3 in some of your biopsy cores, and you are a healthy man.
No matter what you choose for an intervention. It’s going to have to successfully treat you for the next 25 to 30 years of life. Intervention like focal therapy may seem desirable for the sake of side effects, however, a healthy man of 51 years with intermediate risk disease will quite likely have a recurrence and require follow on treatment. Radiation or Removal after failed HIFU is not the same as one or the other as primary therapy. You should expect to lose at least one of your neurovascular bundles (side of disease) If not both with follow up therapy after focal. Excellent nerve sparing surgery is what it’s all about to minimize side effects, same goes for very experienced radiation oncologist should you choose that route.
I encourage you to use the MSK post treatment calculator. This will give you an idea of expected long-term PSA cure when you put in your numbers overtime after surgery.
For me, the MSK calculator (nomogram site below)was very sobering, my 10 year expected PSA free cure is only 58% after surgery. This is why I chose surgery first, I chose my intervention based upon how many years I expect to live after treatment and what would be the best follow up adjuvant therapy should I have a recurrence.
Good luck to you, my friend, I hope this makes sense and helps, bottom line, this disease sucks and there just is no free lunch.

jc

https://www.mskcc.org/nomograms/prostate

PS: I do not believe there are any supplements that decrease your risk of recurrence. You are doing all the right things by tightening up your current lifestyle.

I second the recommendation from Josephg. You can also go to a center of (prostate cancer) excellence. There you will be evaluated by a team of specialists who can advise you on the best treatment for you. Typically, they have no particular axe to grind.

https://profiles.hopkinsmedicine.org/provider/Christian+Pavlovich/2703813

Certainly a very impressive resume, but he is a urologist with special expertise in prostate SURGERY. It would be great if you could get another opinion from a radiation expert. I searched the Johns Hopkins site and found Dr Patel who specializes in urologic oncology. Perhaps you can make an appointment with him on the same day.

https://profiles.hopkinsmedicine.org/provider/Sunil+Hemant+Patel/2700315

Alternatively, you can contact Dr Sean Collins at Georgetown U Medical Center. He is one of the best known in the US prostate radiology field with at least 1000 SBRT procedures under his belt and more than 100 (refereed) papers on the subject.

HIFU being just one of several ablation techniques are typically used for Focal therapy. Often used for salvage treatments, but can be used for initial treatments as well if the cancer has not metastasized. Focal therapy can be a good alternative (lesser side effects) to the standard of care RP or RT, but only on select patients having low to intermediate grade cancers and a lesion that is in a accessible position and other factors. HIFU and Cryotherapy are available at most centers of excellence. I'm scheduled to have IRE nanoknife in a few weeks at Fox Chase Cancer Center. Because Focal therapy only treats the index lesions there is a higher chance of recurrence because they are not ablating the entire gland. I choose IRE which is a non thermal process which supposedly leaves less damage to surrounding structures. It's not for everyone, but because I've been told I am a good candidate, I thought I'd give it a go. If it fails I still have the options of repeat IRE or RP, RT. Anyhow, I'm not promoting it, but it may be another option to think about if you're a good candidate? I've found like others have mentioned having a multi disciplined team is a plus. Ultimately though the decision is one we have to make and god knows it isn't an easy one.