New Poll: What was your primary treatment for your Prostate Cancer?

I have been at Healing Well PC for 4 1/4 years now.  When I first came here, the vast majority of men had surgery as their primary treatment.  Some say there was a bias, but I disagree, it was simply a case that most men had surgery back then, and that was what mostly talked about.

Over the years, we have had so many new men, other treatments have been used, talked about, and even encouraged.

The poll is simple, what was your primary treatment?  Just curious to see what our mix is like now.

david in sc

P.S.  The polling device will only let you have six selection, so if you choose "6", please post what your treatment choice was.  No intending to downplay Proton, Cybo, Chemo, or any other choice.  Also, if you have not decided yet, but have a verified diagnosis of prostate cancer, that's ok too, please state that.

Wanting to see how things have changed over the past 4 plus years.

Thanks

Post Edited (Purgatory) : 1/17/2013 11:35:27 AM (GMT-7)

Mine is Other.

High Dose Rate Brachytherapy (two procedures), IMRT (25 fractions), and HT (ADT3) for three years

lol, panic, good one, lol

thats ok, yooper, trying to get a feel for how our "mix" is right now, as opposed to 4 years ago

Harold spoke to the doc today and he will be doing HDR brachytherapy at UCLA next month.

i know we have a lot more seed guys out there. least 1 or 2 protons.

and several have spoken about AS recently.

a big change i see, is there is a 3 to 1 (or greater) edge with robotic over open surgery, sure wasn't that high back in 2008.

been interesting so far, thanks

Hi

open surgery my Christmas present 2006

Gerry

I guess most of us feel like being in a river in Egypt.

Other .... Targeted Focal Therapy

Which has resulted in my and another here being the most successfully treated men in this forum. Although if I came to this forum today I would likely choose AS.

darn I was lucky. The key for all those recently diagnosed is not to panic. Learn the severity of your Pca. 1 core out of 30 with a gleason 6 does not mean jump on an operating asap. Take your time in deciding and when you have take another week off, get away from all thoughts of cancer then and only then revisit your decision. If you feel the same go ahead without looking back . Don't dismiss potential QOL side effects. For there are many men walking around with such effects now for really no reason, although many are in denial and will never admit it or show regret. Bottom line is still the fact you are more likely to die with Pca than of it. Not all cancers are the same. Don't Panic!!!!

I have to disagree with Dave, I go back to 2007 here and can attest to a strong surgical bias back then. For one who chose another treatment even brachytherapy sure heard quite a bit against their choices. You can't know for sure until the gland is removed. Great then you learn your cancer was indeed low risk after all, meanwhile where are my incontinence pads? Hopefully for not too long but some for life. It happens. Then there was those who chose radiation well you can't do srt if needed. Not entirely true, but it's rare that the success rate of only 30% of srt ever comes up. I also talked to my doctor who states that in many surgeries if there's a question to the gleason number many pathologists will round it up most of the time because that makes all feel better. I don't say all gleason upgrades are like that but if it can be graded as a 6 or 7 post surgery it will be a 7. Then in my case my TFT which I considered doing as a "no brainer" was dismissed as risky or I wouldn't want be a guinea pig, to outright questioning my sanity. All this for a less invasive clinical trial therapy where I was monitored and still am only annually now. If the Pca came back I still had all options. That was considered risky crazy here back in 07-08.

For those here back then who chose the norm radical surgery may not have noticed the bias, but those who were here like Just Julie, myself, Tud..etc who chose another treatment sure saw and/or experienced it.

gleason - really didnt get it, not until the very last word in your post, then it sunk it. that's why i have been the subject of many a good gag over the year, take things too literally. i was concentrating on the word egypt and the word river at face value. its fun beeing me.

ziggy, thanks for piping in, was hoping to have your treatment choice included. i agree with you about srt - has extreme low sucess rate on a good day, i was only giving 20% chance of it working, not only did it not work, but the screw up surrounding left me crippled and disabled for life, and it didnt remotely slow down the cancer. i doubt the cancer was anywhere near my prostate bed.

Sorry - maybe it was a bit early in the morning
Mind you being in denial wasn't the case for me.

Mine is other. Punch clinical trial at COH.

of course guys, this isn't meant to be a scientific poll, just a taking of names kind of things, as we only represent a grain of salt in a large salt shaker. still finding the results interesting, not a doubt, that surgery is overwhelmingly the prefered method for primary treatment.

what will be said next, is probably true. most men get diagnosed through a urologist, and most urologist are surgeons, so their natural bias is for surgery.

the only thing i would do different, going back to 2008, after my dx, i should have gone to a good PC oncologist like i have now, and see what he would have had me do. he has no natural bias either way, as far as treatment goes. many oncologist tend to be neutral. he has told me, that with what i had going on post surgery, he would have never reccomended the SRT I had, saying that it was doomed to fail to begin with, and left me exposed to all the risks and damages that were done to me, all for nothing.

my neighbor is still the only person i personally know, that had the freezing thing done for his PC, but he had a really low grade case, and a body wrecked with mutiple surgery scars from other maladies he had in the past, so surgery was instantly ruled out for him. so far, he's pulling zero's every time. he already had perm. ed prior to PC, so that wasn't even a factor for him.

david