possible lymph node involvement - nothing left to do

Hey Glass I to am in TN if you get time send me an email and we can chat.
peace and grace
Dale

hi all.  this is glass guy's wife.  glass guy had eye surgery this week and can't see to get on the computer so i am checking things out for him. 

i just read all the posts and your signatures.  pretty remarkable stories here.  those alone are encouraging.  glass guy has an appt on the 30th with a urologist/oncologist.  anxious to hear what he has to say.  we heard back from loma linda.  they pretty much said what the local urologist said and that's basically a biopsy of the lymph nodes is too invasive and the treatment would be hormone either way so why do the dissection?  well, what if the cancer isn't in the lymph nodes?  what if it's just hidden away somewhere else that would otherwise be treatable?

the hard part is sitting here waiting but since he had surgery our focus is getting through this eye thing first.  don't know if any of you guys ever had a retinal detachment but his was complicated and under general anesthesia.  complicated because of the number of tears.  they did the gas bubble thing and the next day the gas bubble deflated and they had to go back in and instill more gas.  so what could have been an office appt. outpatient surgery for normal people turned into a three days of trips into the hospital with surgery under general anesthesia, recovery, and then another outpatient surgery.

our plan is to see what the oncologist says.  glass guy is prohibited from any treatments for the next 5 weeks at minimum so we will put that time to good use and check things out.  thanks for all the info.

btw, have a happy holidays.

Les
Good to hear your experience was as rewarding as mine. Many people on this board feel that getting the right Dr. is important. I am encouraged by all the posts on this site. There are many people who are managing this disease and will continue so for many years. More importantly, there are those who know of others like ourselves who have outlived this disease.
Happy New Year

hi all. happy new year. may you all get good numbers this year. this is GG's wife. he is still recovering from eye surgery.

we went to the oncologist. we were positively impressed. nothing new treatment wise but we did learn something significant. vanderbilt sent for the tissue samples that were taken from GG's biopsy 3 years ago in arizona. they disagreed with arizona's findings. back then GG was a gleason 7 (4&3). that's what we went on when we made treatment decisions. loma linda was waiting on the lab results to accept GG into their treatment and did not re-test the tissue samples. the lab at vanderbilt said GG was a gleason 9 (5&4). Knowing that back then may have had an impact on the treatment decision. but that's water under the bridge. it would explain what is going on now.

the oncologist did not affirmatively say he disagreed with the urologist GG has been seeing but he did say he would have done things differently. he would have immediately put GG back on hormone, done additional CAT scans (abdomen and chest) and set up a follow up of the PSA scores in a shorter time period. He wouldn't have done the latest biopsy. Right now with no additional symptoms, he said any other treatment would be like searching in the dark. he also said that the cancer is not local but systemic with psa's so high. so here we sit. we now have vanderbilt and loma linda saying the same thing. both disagreeing with the urologist but neither having better news.

vanderbilt has some clinical trials going on with hormone resistant prostate cancer. we may ask about those if GG's numbers keep going up.

thanks for all the encouragement everyone. We haven't thrown in the towel yet!