"the good news is that if you had to get cancer, you got the best kind"

how man of us heard these words from our urologist the day we found out?

those words didn't help me any. I couldn't even talk for the first hour.

Well they're right though.

My sister in law ( 41 ) has been fighting a really hard battle with cancer. Her goal was to live as long as possible to see her kids grow as much as possible. Her children know nothing but battling cancer as a consequence. They've been raise din that environemnt.

Today we found out she has gotten Neoplastic Meningitis. This is the prognosis and should make us realize that those words we hear have some veracity to them:

The median survival time of untreated patients with NM is 4–6 weeks, and death generally occurs because of progressive neurological dysfunction [7]. Treatment is intended to improve or stabilize the neurological status, maintain the neurological quality of life, and prolong survival. Fixed neurological defects are rarely improved with treatment, but progression of neurological deterioration may be halted in some patients and the median survival time can be increased to 4–6 months [16]. Of the solid tumors, breast cancer responds best, with median survival times of 6 months and 11%–25% 1-year survival rates [26, 55]. Numerous prognostic factors for survival and response have been looked at (age, gender, duration of signs of NM, increased protein or low glucose in CSF, ratio of lumbar/ventricular CEA, etc.), but many remain controversial [55]. It is commonly accepted, however, that patients will do poorly with intensive treatment of NM if they have a poor performance status, multiple fixed neurologic deficits, bulky CNS disease, coexistent carcinomatous encephalopathy, and CSF flow abnormalities demonstrated by radionuclide ventriculography. In general, patients with widely metastatic aggressive cancers that do not respond well to systemic chemotherapies are also less likely to benefit from intensive therapy [56, 57]. What appears clear is that, optimally, NM should be diagnosed in the early stages of disease to prevent progression of disabling neurological deficits, analogous to the clinical situation of epidural spinal cord compression.

I completely disagree.

In a case of a lower severity PCa that never returns, perhaps the statement is correct. However, for us Gleason 9 & 10 guys, you are uttering fighting words.

I'll stop there, in deference to the moderators.

Never said Cancer didn't suck. I'm on my third. Yes, I agree that some are much worse, and you're gone in a heartbeat. That has happened in my family.

I feel for you and yours, but I still disagree completely with the generalizations that lead to the original statement. It is inconsiderate at best, and those who repeat it are clueless.

davidg, I'm very sorry to hear about the new progression in your sister's case.  She has obviously had some positive factors working in her favor which have helped push her to the right side of the survival curve, and I truly hope that will continue to be beneficial for her.  [Just last night I posted in another thread a little explanation about statistics and the survival curve; if you haven't seen that, go to this LINK and read about 5 posts down...might be information you already know, might not.] Regarding the comment in the title of this thread, a lot of people who never had PC look at this as the reality, while a lot of men with PC feel belittled by the way it's worded.  I've found another way to restate the same reality with more palatable words:  " Prostate cancer is among the more common and less lethal malignancies, yielding a large population of survivors ."   Overall survival across the board is very high (around 97%, or higher), and while that still means that across a very large population there will be thousands who die from PC, there are likely others who might make the comparison to other cancer cases (like your sister) and be relieved that their case is indeed a “less lethal” type of cancer.  

97%. I guess that's because 1 in 6 will eventually get it. And the median age of dx is 69, so many die with it and not from it. You feel worse for a guy who survives another 10 years or so, when he gets pca at 42, then a guy who has 10 years left who is 72.

So that 97% is inherently flawed.

Hows this for a grand generalization:

200,000 in US will be dx with pca this year.
30,000 in US will dies from pca this year.
We are currently trending at 85% DX TO Death.

Take all the other guys that WOULD have dued from it, but ran out of time, and it is alot worse than 85.

Is how my thinking goes. Generally speaking.

I have been told several times"Prostate cancer, that's no big deal". I just look at them and say "Seriously? All cancer is a big deal. Try having some one scoop out your insides, live with a catheter,Not be able to control your pee, be sexually non functional,and then if your lucky under go radiation treatments or hormone treatments. Then tell me its No Big Deal!"
As far as common cancers go, PCa is the least talked about.Awareness is a huge problem.You don't see a big production made of it like you do for example breast cancer. Until 5 months ago, I never gave it a second thought.
By the way,since it's a man's disease,why did they give us a baby blue ribbon? Seriously.....Baby Blue!

"the good news is that if you had to get cancer, you got the best kind"

I would never say this to anyone, knowing the wide spectrum of severity of PCa, and nobody said it to me. Maybe a more polite interpretation though.

But, a week or so after my diagnosis after I realized my case was at the mild end, I said it to myself many times to try and reduce the anxiety and also said it a lot to my friends and relatives once they heard my diagnosis and I had to reassure them or keep them from being upset. My father died of PCa so I think, some people thought that was my fate too.

This is slightly off topic but related: I was kind of surprised after I got my diagnosis that I was the one who had to console and reassure my circle of friends and relatives. I kind of expected it to be the other way around.

Dan

Lynn;
What you said makes some sense, and I may still be a little angry about the whole situation.

"

This is slightly off topic but related: I was kind of surprised after I got my diagnosis that I was the one who had to console and reassure my circle of friends and relatives. I kind of expected it to be the other way around. said...


Dan, I agree with that one. I think when I was diagnosed and then going through surgery, I tried really hard to hold it together so that everyone else would see that I wasn't worried and they would stay calm. heck, the morning I got my diagnosis, I was in a customer meeting 30 minutes later.

A few months later I am realizing that as hard as I tried to not admit it, I was probably scared as hell - I get way more emotional now at the slightest thing, and I find I am going through a pretty rough mid-life crisis. Even though I'm improving every day, getting back to exercise, etc, there isn't a day that I don't think about how I feel like a broken down piece of crap; or that I do the math on how many months to my next PSA test. this cancer blows, all cancers blow.

My prayers are with your sister in law DavidG


AB

ps -the news today is that besides the meningitis, she also has a new tumor, in the pancreas. They think this is a new cancer altogether because they said breast cancer doesn't travel to the pancreas.

She star with breast, then lymph nodes, then liver, then brain, then bone. now meningitis and pancreas.

4 years ago while visiting, before she had any of the effects from too much radiation/chemo she told me "i just want to hang around as long as possible to try and be there until the kids are old enough to be able to handle it"

Her kids aren't good. My nephew (13) goes to sleep on the floor besides her bed at night. He sneaks in alone after they've already gone to bed. The kids still have hope. even now they think she's in the hospital because of a problem with her spine. They look at her with her palsy, her one eye sown shut and I can't imagine how they're being affected by it all.

My mother never got over the death of her mother by cancer. First off my grandmother turned to God in her last month and shut everyone out, including my mother who was only a teen. Then she passed the night my mother was sleeping in bed with her. Imagine waking up to a dead parent. Cancer is as tough on our loved ones as it is on us.

I think I really only lashed out at 1 person.A kind of pompous azz in our group that no one really likes but we all like his wife. A few minutes later I apologized. It was about the third time I had heard it that day. Like I said, I may still be a little angry about this whole ordeal!

Sorry to hear your news.  I would say no cancer is good.  My uro even said that prostate cancer was "better some some other cancers".  Even if you are in remission, no one knows what goes through your mind after diagnosis and beyond.  I hate to admit it but I think about cancer and future PSA's tests probably more than I should....

My father passed away around 1 1/2 years after he was Dx with brain cancer. He had 12 siblings and 6 of them has died from cancer. Either brain(2) or lung(4). Except for 1 all were smokers. No PCa !
In a way I must have been pre-determined to contract some kind of cancer. Out of over 100 cousins(lost track after 100)so far I'm the lone wolf. I thought may be it was just a generational curse.