Northfoot said...
Supposed to be no such thing as a cure for advanced prostate cancer. Just remission until you succumb to some other disease. Then you can retrospectively consider yourself cured. Having said that, even 4 years out of salvage radiation, each test is nerve wracking.
I guess that is kind of what I was wondering: how do you ever know? Can't you go years with no BCR, and then it is back? I have a friend locally- but do not know his pre-RT Gleason or PSA- who had made it 5 years post RT with no signs of it and then sixth year- there it is. Considering his advanced age he may well still pass from something else before PC. Plus treatment for PC has been rough on him apparently. In fact he recently had a close call and was sent to the hospital for a week+, and several of the things that were severely bothering him sound like possible SEs from the Xtandi(sp?) they had him on for his PC. But he probably was starting to think he was cured, but he was not.
Still, having said the above, I imagine some are cured from G9-10. In fact, it was told to me that
if my G9 was contained, which my surgeon suspected it was preop, surgery would offer me a cure. It was not contained, but if it had been, wouldn't I probably have been cured by either surgery or RT? But for most of us, it might be a really long time before you know. Sometimes even with 7s and 8s.
But, both of my UROs did tell me recently that if I did start to rise in the future, the longer that took, the more likely that whatever cancer was left behind was of the less aggressive strain(even though I did have 8s and 9s) plus the more likely whatever I had was still in the prostate bed. That would not be a cure obviously but relatively good news considering some of the news we can get.