Maybe the real advice is learn all you can from every possible source you can find, but don't make your treatment or choices based solely upon what some other patient has done...this is PCa... you cannot rely on anything of PCa with totality, nice to know but don't do salvage or a particular treatment just because someone else herein has done it...don't do it because someone herein posted plenty of times...doesn't mean much. Forget the cumbye-ya for making a decision on a PCa treatment, this is time for serious consideration and reflection by the agonizing patient who can easily be swayed by public opinions or even a particular doc, without knowing enough to make their best decision and thus could be rushed into whatever....and come Monday morning live it thereafter, and maybe learning about
things that could have made significant differences to them, thereafter.
Your docs don't even agree on how to treat the same patient as documented by many others with PCa and other cancers or diseases. Too much is unknown and grey areas, not nearly enough specifics to measure collective data and make your life decision, but we end up looking at all the nomograms, partin tables, scans, collected data and hope they are good clues or we take the advice of whatever Doc-Z says is the way or his way to treat PCa. Realize it is still a crapshoot to some reasonable degree, just analyze failure rates or reoccurances, salvage therapy statistcal odds of possible cure??? How do they measure cure and is this an accurate assessment or is it usually flawed????? How do you assess cure rates in general, is it guaranteed after 10 yrs. of non-detectable psa levels??? How many choices are there, are there methods the general public is not told about????
Although all of us PCa patients would like to be of help to others whom have maybe no idea what is being put before them, in our zest we will be giving biased information in most cases or just because one therapy seemed to work well for a patient (only 1-2 yrs. out maybe) does not mean it is golden either, it might or could be, but it is unknown as to yr. 5-10 thereafter. (for now anyway) Also, one patient with a particular disaster looking treatment does not mean that it is that way in general or would be for someone else and can happen in any treatment/modality, even in biopsies and other testing things.
Good idea: read, study, analyze, compare/contrast, use internet/books/tapes/testimonials, seek mulitple opinions from Docs or others, question everything put to you, ask more questions, seek truth and facts, verify anything you can (tests, opinions, data etc.), get copies of any medical records and learn to read them, don't be afraid to change doctors or do whatever becomes necessary for your best care or outcome to go forward, realize in some cases cure is not even possible, but control might have many possibilities to consider.
*caveat any comparison to anybody on this thread is only co-incidental and not the intention of the bloggo writer, void where prohibited, not valid in New Jersey, 2% tax will be added, 25.9% interest charge after 30 days, copyrighted, patented, Happy New Yr.