F8 I think two weeks is a little rushed. Two months IMHO would be acceptable. He isn't a G9 or even an 8. With this disease, the cure is quite often worse than the disease itself. I say this because of a my last doctor interview before making my decision when I talked to my GP. I wanted this man's advice because he is a good general physician. He has zero money invested in either specialty but gets feed back from nurses and patients. He said 30% of the PC patients would likely live if they did nothing. The problem is you don't know if you are going to be in the 70 percent group or the 30 percent group.
Walkbyfaith: the Consequences of the treatments are too real and occur too often with this disease. Study good. I recommend this book for your reading:
"The Decision: Your prostate biopsy shows cancer. Now what?: Medical insight, personal stories, and humor by a urologist who has been where you are now." Like the title says, this Dr. McHugh has been in our shoes.
Pick a couple of other books on you own and read, read, read.
With your hubby 45 yrs young, he really needs to think about
surgery. Remember, Docs will not operate on radiated tissue but you can radiate after surgery. With a good 30 years left to live, your husband may need a good salvage treatment plan later on.
What I would do is call a Kaiser owned hospital in a big California city where you will have a big pool of doctors to choose from. Call the main phone number and ask for the operating room. Then ask to speak to an operating room nurse. If she doesn't give you her name, tell her to please keep her name to herself if possible. Then explain your husband's condition and ask who she would want operating on her husband, dad, or son. I did this at two hospitals and in one case a clerk answered and told me she wasn't a operating room nurse but could get one. I explained to her that I wanted no nurse's names but I wanted two referrals for a prostatectomy. She came back with two names. I got four names in total using this method. By not getting the nurse's name, they can make a referral without concern of it coming back to them and pissing off another doctor they didn't recommend. Also don't put them on the spot and ask if Dr. SoandSo is any good. To keep Dr. SoandSo happy, the nurse will probably tell you he is fantastic even if he is just medocre. Lastly, keep in mind that some hospitals don't have the Davinci so you will need to find a hospital with a Davinci to find a good Davinci surgeon if you decide on robotic surgery. I would rather have a great robotic surgeon perform a prostatectomy over a good
open surgeon, but I would rather have a good
open surgeon perform on me than a good robotic surgeon. I believe the robot has steeper learning curve. I hope this makes sense.
Post Edited (Desertrat1) : 1/14/2012 3:38:26 PM (GMT-7)