Husband Diagnosed G9 2 days ago

Be your own quarterback. A medical oncologist is for when a cure has past. Not proper yet.

I was on ADT for three years. I made it through just fine. You will too. As for Megace, for me it was terrible. Instant weight gain. It is for women on chemo who have no appetite. Give it to a man who likes to eat and you have a perfect storm of weight gain. Exercise, no caffeine, and reduced alcohol (save for red wine) are the best to combat hot flashes. They usually come on when one is sedentary.

You are doing well stay relaxed and open to research. It will be fine.

I agree with Allen that you'll very likely have a good meeting with Demanes and that he'll answer as many questions as you have. I had no idea of the poll vaulting, however!

I would say however that the medical oncologists at Prostate Oncology Specialists don't just work with patients that can't be cured. At least I hope not, since I go there and I'm really thinking I'm cured at this point. Ditto with several others on HealingWell, including one Triple Play guy that's commented on this thread. I can only speak from my personal experience that Dr Lam was incredibly helpful in everything from helping me stage my disease through my treatment and my ongoing follow-up. (Anecdotally, others here have had voiced similar experiences.) But POS is certainly not typical of MOs that don't focus solely on prostate cancer.

That said to Allen's point, it's certainly not necessary and Demanes definitely knows more about his speciality than anyone at POS ever can. And I greatly respect Allen's opinion on this since he has more PCa knowledge in his little finger than I have in my whole body.

I was diagnosed by a urologist with a urinary oncology specialization, who coordinated everything initially through the final diagnostic phase. From there, I was referred to a radiation oncologist, decided on radiation therapy, and for quite some time thereafter my RO was the center person for my treatment and follow up.

We moved out of that state less than a year later, and I had to find a whole new doctor support team. Considering my diagnosis, treatment, side effects, and any likely subsequent treatments, I chose a urologic-specialty medical oncologist as my main coordinator. Their expertise is in drug therapies, like Lupron, Casodex, Prolia, and so on, with which I was to deal for 3 years. I asked her at the time of selection if she was comfortable with and thought this to be an appropriate role in my case, and she did.

And, since subsequent therapies are likely to be in the same therapeutic arena, I still have a urology specialist MO as my main coordinator, in a hospital urological oncology clinic. For me, I have no problems from the radiation therapy, I have no incontinence or ED issues needing any attention from a urologist. Nothing I need support for is directly in a urologist's area. If we decide that further radiation becomes appropriate some day, then at that time I'll look up an RO.

If I had had surgery, and was dealing with related urological issues, I'd for sure be centered on a urologist. If my case was intermediate risk, had radiation therapy, and was dealing with fall out (so to speak) from the radiation, then I'd want an RO as my main coordinator, and/or maybe still a urologist.

So I'm in favor of an MO for me, where I'm at in this process. We watch the PSA quarterly, and that's about it for now.

If you can get in to see King first, maybe he can pull some strings - they work closely together.
You can try emailing him directly: [email protected]

You might be able to get to see Kamrava at Cedars Sinai more quickly. Kamrava trained under Demanes and recently moved from UCLA to Cedars to do HDR brachy there.

A month is no problem, especially if he starts hormone therapy.

Dr King has treated many brachy boost patients and followed them, and can speak to its effectiveness and SEs. He can also brief you on his SBRT high risk protocol.

The brachy boost part of the treatment would require two trips, a week apart.

The bone scan came back clean!!! Still waiting for MRI results and really hope to have them tomorrow...but I had to celebrate this bit of good news

Still trying to get in sooner with Drs. King and Demanes, and my husband seems to have kind of come out of the shock of diagnosis and is now on a mission to kick some cancer ass, so here we are, 1 week post diagnosis...feeling like we're on a much better path than 1 week ago.

Thanks again so much for all the support!

Congratulations! That's good news.

The first week is usually the darkest emotionally. It will get better as you go along.

Just got MRI results, but a doctor still has to go over them with us.

Conclusion 3 is "No MRI evidence of local regional metastatic disease".

I'm no doctor, but that looks like good news to me

There are some other terms in here I'm not sure about (T2 signal reference - I'm going to have to look that up), and it looks like the tumor on the left side of the prostate is pretty involved with the nerve bundle on that side.

All told, despite the confirmation of a pretty cancer-ridden prostate gland, it seems like we can be thankful it doesn't appear to have spread, which puts us in good shape for successful treatment with radiation, unless I'm misinterpreting something. Glad to go into the weekend with a little more hope at least

Tall Allen-
we're meeting with Chris King in a week and a half (still trying to get in earlier with Demanes too). You mentioned a 5 treatment radiation therapy trial Dr. King is working on currently. We'll talk to him about it I'm sure in our meeting with him - is there any further info you can provide us with now? I wonder if my husband is even a candidate?