Alarming statistic from National Cancer Institute's site

Yesterday I was reading the NCI's site about treatment options for Prostate Cancer.  One of the questions was about needing further treatment in the future.  The NCI stated that PSA levels will rise within 5 years in 1 out of 3 men who have undergone surgery and 1 out of 3 men who have undergone radiation!  I thought I wasn't seeing clearly, so I re-read it and re-read it again this morning.  That's a scary figure!  Does the Prostate Cancer journey every end?

 

You want "alarming"? Run your numbers through the Sloan Kettering Nomogram. Or the Johns Hopkins Calculator.
You'll be as nervous as the day you watched them draw birthdays for the Selective Service lottery.
A glass of chilled Riesling will take the edge off the experience.
Jeff

My husband was also told he only had about a 30% chance of having cancer.  His PSA was 5.1, however his free psa was between 10-13%.  After repeatedly checking his PSA for over a year and a half and radically changing his diet - eating tons of raw vegetables, eating tons of raw garlic ( you can imagine the smell from both ends), lots of soy, lots of selenium, lycopene, vitamin E, green tea, he couldn't take it any more and decided on the biopsy.  Yep, he has cancer 4 out of 12 samples positive.  Gleason 6. 

I'm sick of reading statistics. You'll find them favoring one thing or another. Sure, I'd like to know my odds of recurrence, but you can't just rely on the prevailing national statistics or this chart or that nomogram.

I'm of the position that every case is unique to the individual and YOUR chances of recurrence are based largely on YOUR particular case (size of the cancer, how long it's been growing, where it's located, DNA type, lab results, your overall health, age, whether the sun is shining that day, etc.).

Just get your cancer treated knowing that you may need further treatment later. Deal with the blows as they come; don't waste your time assuming the worst. Nothing good comes from waiting or looking for bad news.

HD,

I concur in your thoughts on this. I have said many times that while we must maintain vigilance in following our own PCa journeys, taking the follow-up tests and making decisions as they are needed, we must get on with the living and enjoyment of life.

They are only STATS.

I traveled a few thousand miles to be treated by on of the best da Vinci surgeons in the world. My lowest PSA ever following surgery was .40.

Barely 3 months from surgery, at a PSA of .63, I underwent IG/IRMT that was planned by one of the best ROs at MD Anderson. He has since went on to become the head of Radiology of the UCLA Medical Center.

4 months following radiation at a still rising PSA that had gotten to 1.6, I underwent MET radiation therapy.

At barely 1 year from that I am now seeing a PSA of 4.9.

None of these fall remotely into the realm of normal STATS.

Every Day is A Bonus and I continue to live all of them to the fullest. I take the tests and make the decisions as needed, but I don't put any stock into the stats about anything that may pertain to me because I have shown that they don't apply in my situation.

Sonny

Sonny - I fully agree with your post, with my own PC journey, I have been on the wrong side of every stat so far, lol.

I used to be a fish -

i fully understand what you are posting. I'm always thinking of the worst myself and looking for guarantees that nobody can give me even though everyone tells me not to worry anymore.

That said, I think we need to find a way of stepping back and away form all this. I love this site, I think it is incredibly valuable but sometimes there is too much in our PCa world that creates negativity.

I have family members who beg me to not read stuff online about PCa. They think that distancing yourself from this whole new reality of ours is the best way to approach it and move on. This might explain why its really hard to find people who are doing great on medical forums. Maybe we are punishing ourselves when we constantly dig around the internet for studies and articles that we hope can give us some kind of temporal guarantee.

I'm such a sucker for punishment that I even watched the Javier Bardem movie "Biutiful" the other night about a man in Barcelona who dies of advanced (edit) prostate cancer. It was so difficult to watch. My father had seen it and knew I was watching and called me begging me to turn it off. He just didn't see the benefit for me to see that.

So, remission, cured... I don't know. But I do know that no matter how impossible it might be for some of us because of our personalities, It might just be best to go to our scheduled doctor visits but live as if we didn't have anything anymore. If it ops up again we'll deal with it as our doctors suggest we should and keep hoping until we can.

I'm sure a few will misinterpret this post. I love this site, but perhaps there is something to stepping away from all this and trying to move one in order to try and stop worrying so much. I'm not there yet but hope to be soon. I just spent ten days without internet and it was great.

Post Edited (davidg) : 6/14/2011 6:28:20 PM (GMT-6)

There's a very good movie, staring Peter O'Toole, called Venus, made in 2006 I believe. And in the movie, he is dying from advanced prostate cancer. Actually an uplifting movie, as his teenaged niece moves in with him, and then there is the huge generational gap difference between the two. And in the movie, each learns from the other. He dies at the end, in the manner he would have chosen. It was a good contrast type movie, well written and acted.

david in sc