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Posted 7/13/2016 11:26 PM (GMT 0)
HI Deon124!
I just looked at your pathology report and see that you qualified to join our PT3 Club, which is a bunch of us who were staged pT3.
That means that the tumor was just coming out of the prostate. Unfortunately, it is not a fun club to be a member of but is not the end of the world either.

You will need to have your PSA tested more frequently in the coming months/years to be sure recurrence doesn't happen.

I am coming up on 4 years post-op July 17th and I am still getting undetectable results so don't worry too much. However, most of us in the pT3 Club do worry so that is why we started the club.

If you look for our thread it should be on this page of HW. I added you to the membership list. I was elected to be in charge of the membership so I hope you don't mind me adding your name and stats. I also added the "Welcome Post" to it for you.

You may noticed that it is a long list so you are not alone at all. If you have any questions just look for this thread and add your post. The club is open 24\7.

Welcome aboard, sorry you are a member but hey, misery loves company! yeah

Bill from Florida cool
Posted 7/14/2016 12:31 AM (GMT 0)
Deon, yeah, that report stinks, but it's not the end of the world. Your key effort for now is recovering from the surgery. Keep walking, get stronger, eat healthy. Why? because if your body is otherwise healthy, it increases your ability to deal with the next things.

Six weeks post surgery is a common time for the first post surgery PSA. You may not be a full zero, but you should be close. It can take up to 3 months after surgery to join the zero club. After that, commonly, you get regular PSA readings, and see what happens. Some docs do like to jump right at it with HT, others like to wait a bit.
Posted 7/14/2016 7:46 AM (GMT 0)
Does anybody have any info of someone/doctor etc who one can e mail the full histology report and who will be willing to disect the report for me into layman terms with no sugercoating.?
Posted 7/14/2016 5:25 PM (GMT 0)
I just took notes on what I didn't understand then went over it all with my surgeon on my next follow up visit.

Your results are similar to mine. A pT3a staging means the tumor was just coming out of the prostate but has not invaded the siminal vesicles. If it had, you would have been staged pT3b. The act of cutting the prostate out may have eliminated any problems. It looks like you have 2 positive margins like I had. What that means is when the surgeon made his cut, there were 2 areas where it showed positive for the tumor at these points. Kind of like trimming the crust off a piece of bread, was there an area where some of the crust was left on the other side of the knife?

The surgeon should be able to tell you how many millimeters it was at those areas. If you have your path report, it should show the size of them positive margins in mm's. Not much help for me, I never could understand millimeters.

I was not happy with my results but, as I said, I have had no problems in 4 years. Telling a cancer patient,"I believe I got it all BUT.....there are 2 areas we need to watch" is not reassuring but for me and many others, so far so good.

Good luck

Bill from Florida cool
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